More evidence for a relational shift in the development of analogy: Children's performance on a causal-mapping task

Gentner (1988) has proposed a relational shift whereby children interpret a nalogy and metaphor first in terms of object similarity and then in terms o f relational similarity. Goswami (1996) argues against the relational shift hypothesis, citing as evidence a study performed by Goswami and Brown (198 9) in which 3-, 4-, and 6-year-old children were able to correctly complete pictorial A:B::C:? analogies based on familiar causal relations, and, cont rary to the predictions of the relational shift hypothesis, made very few o bject-similarity errors despite the presence of an object-similarity choice . In the present experiment we obtained similarity ratings of Goswami and B rown's stimuli and found that the materials did not contain a true object s imilarity choice and therefore that study was not an adequate test of the r elational shift hypothesis. After appropriate modifications to their method ology, we found that 4- and 5-year-old children's performance was consisten t with the relational shift hypothesis: First, object-similarity errors wer e highly frequent initially and decreased with age; second, the rate of rel ational (correct) responding increased with age; and third, performance on the analogues was positively related to children's knowledge about the part icipating causal relations. We conclude by proposing an explanation for the relational shift based on an alignment view of similarity comparison and, further, suggest a new role for object similarity in children's analogical development.