Generalization of novel names for relations in comparison settings: the role of conceptual distance during learning and at test.
Category
Conference Proceedings
Authors
Jean-Pierre Thibaut, Eleanor Stansbury and Arnaud Witt
Year
2018
Title
Generalization of novel names for relations in comparison settings: the role of conceptual distance during learning and at test.
Journal / book / conference
In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Abstract
Relational categories are notoriously difficult to learn. We
studied the impact of comparison on relational concept
learning with a novel word learning task in 3- and 4-year olds.
We contrasted a no-comparison (single) condition and two
comparison conditions. In the latter case, the set of learning
pairs was composed of either close or far pairs (e.g., close
pair: knife1- watermelon, knife2-orange; far pair: axevergreen tree, saw-log, for the “cutter for” relation). We also
manipulated the transfer stimuli semantic distance (near or
distant semantic domain, e.g., a scissor for a piece of paper in
the close case, and a shaver for a face in the far domain case).
The no-comparison condition led to random generalizations in
the younger group only. Overall the close learning condition
and the near transfer condition led to good performance. We
discuss these results in terms of the role of semantic distance
and how participants integrate stimuli depending on distance.
Pages
3314-3319
Keywords
relational categories, relational language, comparisons, conceptual distance