Characterizing the Development of Relational Reasoning in India
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- English speakers in the U.S. show a puzzling decline in relational reasoning between 18 months and 3 years old, whereas Mandarin speakers in China show steady improvement over this period. What causes this variation in early relational reasoning, and how general are these two patterns? This project seeks to inform these questions by characterizing the development of relational reasoning in a novel cultural context. In order to understand the mechanisms through which variation in the learning environment influences the development of relational reasoning, we examine early relational reasoning in Punjabi speakers in India, who share some cultural and linguistic elements of their experience with children in China and the U.S. In Experiment 1, we find that 3-year-olds in India exhibit numerically intermediate performance that does not differ significantly from either their high performing peers in China or the poor performance observed in the U.S. at this age. Experiments 2a and 2b test for baseline differences in bias toward relational or object-based solutions, and cultural factors that may influence the development of relational reasoning, and again find mixed results. Preliminary data from 3-4-year-olds in India suggest that they exhibit a preference for object-based solutions over relational solutions in an ambiguous match-to-sample task, resembling the performance of 3-year-olds in the U.S. but not those in China. However, children in India tend to show more relation-focused responding than their U.S. peers in a collection of visual and social tasks. Together, these results highlight complexity and variability in the development of relational reasoning and lay a foundation for future research designed to tease apart the factors associated with early diversity in relational reasoning.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Dhaliwal, Tania |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Symbolic Systems |
| Primary advisor | Frank, Michael C. |
| Advisor | Kachergis, George |
Subjects
| Subject | Program on Symbolic Systems |
|---|---|
| Subject | Relational Reasoning |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Dhaliwal, Tania. (2020). Characterizing the Development of Relational Reasoning in India. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/pf750hp2396
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University
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- Contact
- tania31798@gmail.com
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