Cognitive load and semantic analogies: Searching semantic space
Category
Journal Article
Authors
Thibaut, J.-P., French, R., Vezneva, M.
Year
2010
Title
Cognitive load and semantic analogies: Searching semantic space
Journal / book / conference
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Abstract
The aim of the present study is to investigate the performance of children of different ages on an analogymaking task involving semantic analogies in which there are competing semantic matches. We suggest that this can best be studied in terms of developmental changes in executive functioning. We hypothesize that the selection of common relational structure requires the inhibition of other salient features, in particular semantically related matches. Our results show that children's performance in classic A : B :: C : D analogy-making tasks seems to depend crucially on the nature of the distractors and the association strength between both the A and B terms and the C and D terms. These results agree with an analogy-making account (Richland, Morrison, & Holyoak, 2006) based on different limitations in executive functioning at different ages.
Issue
4
Volume
17
Pages
569-574