An underexplored aspect of the relationship between analogical reasoning and creativity is its phenomenology; in particular, the notion that analogical reasoning is related to insight and its associated "aha!" experience. However, the relationship between these phenomena has never been directly investigated. We adapted a set of verbal…

Analogical reasoning is an important mechanism for social cognition in typically developing children, and recent evidence suggests that some forms of analogical reasoning may be preserved in autism spectrum disorder. An unanswered question is whether children with autism spectrum disorder can apply analogical reasoning to social information. In…

Previous research suggests that preschoolers struggle with understanding abstract relations and with "reasoning by analogy." Four experiments find, in contrast, that 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 168) are surprisingly adept at relational and analogical reasoning within a causal context. In earlier studies preschoolers routinely favored images…

Instructional effects in creative-thinking tasks are important to understand in order to promote creative performance of individuals. In divergent-thinking tasks, for example, instructional and strategic enhancement effects have been extensively studied for verbal tasks. However, while studies on instructional enhancement effects on creative…

This study delved into the structuring of design briefs and investigated the impact of employing visual analogies compared to text analogies. We aimed to contribute to the growing body of research investigating the role of analogies in design problem-solving. To do this, we conducted a controlled experiment at a university with 135 undergraduate…

Accurate self-evaluation leads to better regulation of learning and better performance in elementary school children and acts as a predictor of future academic success. The present study investigates the conditions under which preschoolers' self-evaluation accuracy can be enhanced. In the empirical research, 111 children were assigned to one of…

The language-based analogical reasoning abilities of Deaf children are a controversial topic. Researchers lack agreement about whether Deaf children possess the ability to reason using language-based analogies, or whether this ability is limited by a lack of access to vocabulary, both written and signed. This dissertation examines factors that…

Background: Analogical mapping is a domain-general cognitive process used notably in language development, and particularly in the abstraction of construction schemas. Children with developmental language disorders (DLD) display an impairment in linguistic productivity and creativity, which can be linked to a lack of generalization of construction…

Metaphor development in conjunction with verbal intelligence and linguistic competence in middle childhood and at the transition to early adolescence was investigated. 298 individuals between seven and ten years (chronological age) who attended grades two-four (mental age) were tested for metaphor processing by the Metaphoric Triads Task, for…

Differences exist between engineering and liberal arts students because of their educational backgrounds. Therefore, they solve problems differently. This study examined the brain activation of these two groups of students when they responded to 12 questions of verbal, numerical, or spatial intelligence. A total of 25 engineering and 25 liberal…

In this study, we analyzed the imprecise (i.e., less mathematically precise) responses that 148 third- to fifth-grade Chinese students made on selected-response problems that were part of a spontaneous mathematical focusing task, the Quantitative Relations Test for Chinese Children (QRTC[superscript 2]). The purpose for this analysis was to…

When proportional information is pit against whole number numerical information, children often attend to the whole number information at the expense of proportional information (e.g., indicating 4/9 is greater than 3/5 because 4 > 3). In the current study, we presented younger (3- to 4-year-olds) and older (5- to 6-year-olds) children a task…

Analogical reasoning is essential for transfer by supporting recognition of relational similarity. However, not all analogies are created equal. The source and target can be similar (near), or quite different (far). Previous research suggests that close comparisons facilitate children's relational abstraction. On the other hand, evidence from…

A cross-cultural comparison between U.S. and Hong Kong preschoolers examined factors responsible for young children's analogical reasoning errors. On a scene analogy task, both groups had adequate prerequisite knowledge of the key relations, were the same age, and showed similar baseline performance, yet Chinese children outperformed U.S. children…

This paper focuses on the development of analogical reasoning abilities in 5- and 6-year-old children. Our particular interest relates to the way in which analogizing is influenced by the provision of task-based feedback coupled with a self-explanation requirement. Both feedback and self-explanation provide children with opportunities to engage in…