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Analogy
Cognitive process of taking knowledge of a particular subject to another subject.
Classical Analogy is a term which was coined by Aristotle
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It is defined as an equity of proportions invlolving at least 4 terms, in which the first is related to the second
as the third term is relatd to the fourth. In other words, A is to B as C is to D.
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For example: "fart is to beans as burp is to soda" (Suzanne Pothier)
->Gallagher and Wright gave a group of 10 year olds this problem: Food is to body as rain to which of the
following (water, strom, coat, ground). Most children believed the correct answer was water, when actually it was
ground. The children failed to encorporate the first part of the analogy and did not realize that food is absorbed by
the body as a source of nourishment as rain is absorbed by the ground as a source of noursihment.
->Holyoak et al, presented children 4-6 and 11-12 years with the problem of transfering some small rubber balls
from one bowl on the table within their reach to another bowl which was out of their reach. The children had various tools
available to them to solve this problem, some of which included; scissors, string, large sheet of heavy paper, a cane and
a cardboard tube. The children were asked to come up with as many ways possible of moving the balls without leaving their
seats.
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Before they were presented with this problem they were told a story about a genie who had a smilar problem. The genie
wanted to transfer some precious jewels from one bottle to another
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There were two solutions presented in this story, in the first one, the genie commanded his magic carpet to roll into
a tube so that he could roll the jewels through the tube into the second bottle. The other solution was that the genie used
his magic staff to pull the the bottle within reach so that he could transfer the jewels. If the children understood that
analogy, they would roll the sheet of paper into a tube and then roll the balls through it, or use the cane to bring the bowl
closer so they could transfer the balls.
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They found that in general the younger children failed to benefit from the magic carpter analogy. They did find however,
that the younger children did benefit more from the cane analogy, than the carpet analogy. They suggested that this could
have happened because the magic carpet and the piece of heavy paper were functionally less similar than the magic staff. So
this lack of similarity between the carpet and the piece of paper made it difficult for them to use the hint
So, are younger children unable to reason analogically?
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NO!
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(Brown,
Kane & Long, 1989) - Found that children as young as 3 COULD use analogical reasoning. They used simpler problems in their
study, often using stacking and pulling examples, which children are very familiar with.
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We
must not jump to the conclusion that younger children are incapable of using analogical reasoning, because if presented with
simpler problems and more in-depth explanations, they too can successfully use analogical reasoning.
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