Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
Abstract reasoning in early childhood is often described as following a "relational shift," over which children become increasingly sensitive to relations. However, recent work has challenged the generality of this account, showing that children in the US and China follow distinct trajectories in a relational match-to-sample task (Carstensen et al., 2019). This difference aligns with multiple cultural and linguistic factors implicated in relational reasoning, in which English speakers in the US and Mandarin speakers in China appear at opposite ends of a continuum spanning from a focus on objects (US) to relations (CN). We explore early relational reasoning in a context that represents a cultural middle ground with a key linguistic similarity (noun spurts) to the US: Korean-learning children in South Korea. In two experiments with 262 Korean children, we document relational reasoning in this novel cultural context, revealing similarities and differences to developmental trajectories in the US and China.
Recommended Citation
Carstensen, A., Kim, M., Kim, G., Jin, M., Kang, M., Choi, Y., & Walker, C. M. (2023). Relational abstraction in early childhood: Three cultures and three trajectories. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 45. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/17p5h56j
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.