Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T21:12:33.654Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mutual bootstrapping between language and analogical processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Dedre Gentner  and
Stella Christie
Dedre Gentner*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
Stella Christie
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
*
Correspondence addresses: Dedre Gentner, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Road, Swift Hall 213, Evanston, IL 60660, USA. E-mail: gentner@northwestern.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What makes us so smart as a species, and what makes children such rapid learners? We argue that the answer to both questions lies in a mutual bootstrapping system comprised of (1) our exceptional capacity for relational cognition and (2) symbolic systems that augment this capacity. The ability to carry out structure-mapping processes of alignment and inference is inherent in human cognition. It is arguably the key inherent difference between humans and other great apes. But an equally important difference is that humans possess a symbolic language.

The acquisition of language influences cognitive development in many ways. We focus here on the role of language in a mutually facilitating partnership with relational representation and reasoning. We suggest a positive feedback relation in which structural alignment processes support the acquisition of language, and in turn, language—especially relational language—supports structural alignment and reasoning.

We review three kinds of evidence (a) evidence that analogical processes support children's learning in a variety of domains; (b) more specifically, evidence that analogical processing fosters the acquisition of language, especially relational language; and (c) in the other direction, evidence that acquiring language fosters children's ability to process analogies, focusing on spatial language and spatial analogies. We conclude with an analysis of the acquisition of cardinality—which we offer as a canonical case of how the combination of language and analogical processing fosters cognitive development.

Keywords

language and cognitionanalogyrelational languageanalogical processing
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 261 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asmuth, J. & Gentner, D.. 2005. Context sensitivity of relational nouns. Proceedings of the 27th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 163–168.Google Scholar
Boroditsky, L. 2009. How does our language shape the way we think? In Brockman, (ed.), What's next? Dispatches on the future of science. Vintage Press.Google Scholar
Bowdle, B. & Gentner, D.. 1997. Informativity and asymmetry in comparisons. Cognitive Psychology 34(3). 244–286.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. & Choi, S.. 2003. Space under construction: Language-specific spatial categorization in first language acquisition. In Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and cognition, 387–428. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Boysen, S. T., Berntson, G. G., Hannan, M. B. & Cacioppo, J. T.. 1996. Quantity-based interference and symbolic representations in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 22(1). 76–86.Google Scholar
Brown, R. 1973. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Carey, S. 1985. Are children fundamentally different kinds of thinkers and learners from adults? In Chipman, S. F., Segal, J. W. & Glaser, R. (eds.), Thinking and learning skills 2, 485–517. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Carey, S. 2004. Bootstrapping and the origin of concepts. Daedalus 133.Google Scholar
Carey, S. 2009. The origin of concepts. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carey, S. & Bartlett, E.. 1978. Acquiring a single new word. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 15. 17–29.Google Scholar
Casasola, M. 2005. Can language do the driving? The effect of linguistic input on infants' categorization of support spatial relations. Developmental Psychology 41. 183–192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Childers, J. B. 2008. The structural alignment and comparison of events in verb acquisition. In Sloutsky, V. S., Love, B. C. & McRae, K. (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Childers, J. B. In press. Attention to multiple events helps 2½-year-olds extend new verbs. First Language.Google Scholar
Childers, J. B. & Paik, J. H.. 2009. Korean- and English-speaking children use cross-situational information to learn novel predicate terms. Journal of Child Language 36(01). 201–224.Google Scholar
Christie, S. & Gentner, D.. 2007. Relational similarity in identity relation: The role of language. In Vosniadou, S., Kayser, D., & Protopapas, A. (eds.). Proceedings of the second European cognitive science conference, 601–666. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Christie, S. & Gentner, D.. In press. Where hypotheses come from: Learning new relations by structural alignment. Journal of Cognition and Development.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. 1973. What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, 65–110. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clement, C. A. & Gentner, D.. 1991. Systematicity as a selection constraint in analogical mapping. Cognitive Science 15. 89–132.Google Scholar
Dehaene, S. 1997. The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Doumas, L. A. A., Hummel, J. E. & Sandhofer, C. M.. 2008. A theory of the discovery and predication of relational concepts. Psychological Review 115. 1–43.Google Scholar
Dunbar, K. 1995. How scientists really reason: Scientific reasoning in real-world laboratories. The Nature of Insight. 365–395.Google Scholar
Falkenhainer, B., Forbus, K. D. & Gentner, D.. 1989. The structure-mapping engine: Algorithm and examples. Artificial Intelligence 41. 1–63.Google Scholar
Forbus, K. D., Gentner, D. & Law, K.. 1995. MAC/FAC: A model of similarity-based retrieval. Cognitive Science 19. 141–205.Google Scholar
Frank, M. C., Everett, D., Fedorenko, E. & Gibson, E.. 2008. Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and cognition. Cognition 108. 819–824.Google Scholar
Fuson, K. C. 1988. Children's counting and concepts of number. New York: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Gallistel, C. R. & Gelman, R.. 1992. Preverbal and verbal counting and computation. Cognition 44. 43–74.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 1981c. Some interesting differences between verbs and nouns. Cognition and Brain Theory 4. 161–178.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 1982. Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language development: Volume 2. Language, thought and culture, 301–334. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 1983. Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy. Cognitive Science 7. 155–170.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 1988. Metaphor as structure mapping: The relational shift. Child Development 59. 47–59.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 2003. Why we're so smart. In Gentner, D. and Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 195–236. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 2005. The development of relational category knowledge. In Gershkoff-Stowe, L. & Rakison, D. H. (eds.), Building object categories in developmental time, 245–275. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 2006. Why verbs are hard to learn. In Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. (eds.), Action meets word: How children learn verbs, 544–564. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D., Anggoro, F. & Klibanoff, R.. In press. Structure-mapping and relational language support children's learning of relational categories. Child Development.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Boroditsky, L.. 2001. Individuation, relativity and early word learning. In Bowerman, M. & Levinson, S. (eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development, 215–256. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Bowerman, M.. 2009. Why some spatial semantic categories are harder to learn than others: The Typological Prevalence hypothesis. In Guo, J., Lieven, E., Ervin-Tripp, S., Budwig, N., Özçaliskan, S. & Nakamura, K. (eds.). Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, 465–480. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Christie, S.. 2008. Relational language supports relational cognition in humans and apes. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31. 136–137.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & France, I. M.. 1988. The verb mutability effect: Studies of the combinatorial semantics of nouns and verbs. In Small, S. L., Cottrell, G. W. & Tanenhaus, M. K. (eds.), Lexical ambiguity resolution: Perspectives from psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence, 343–382. San Mateo, CA: Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S.. 2003. Whither Whorf. In Gentner, D. and Goldin-Meadow, S. (eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 3–14. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Loewenstein, J.. 2002. Relational language and relational thought. In Byrnes, J. & Amsel, E. (eds.), Language, literacy, and cognitive development, 87–120. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D., Loewenstein, J. & Hung, B.. 2007. Comparison facilitates children's learning of names for parts. Journal of Cognition and Development 8. 285–307.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Markman, A. B.. 1994. Structural alignment in comparison: No difference without similarity. Psychological Science 5(3). 152–158.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Medina, J.. 1998. Similarity and the development of rules. Cognition 65. 263–297.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Namy, L.. 1999. Comparison in the development of categories. Cognitive Development 14. 487–513.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Namy, L.. 2004. The role of comparison in children's early word learning. In Hall, D. G. & Waxman, S. R. (eds.), Weaving a lexicon, 533–568. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D., Ozyürek, A., Goldin-Meadow, S. & Gurcanli, O.. 2008. Spatial language potentiates spatial cognition: Evidence from deaf homesigners. American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Rattermann, M. J.. 1991. Language and the career of similarity. In Gelman, S. A. & Byrnes, J. P. (eds.), Perspectives on thought and language: Interrelations in development, 225–277. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D., Rattermann, M. J. & Forbus, K. D.. 1993. The roles of similarity in transfer: Separating retrievability from inferential soundness. Cognitive Psychology 25. 524–575.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Toupin, C.. 1986. Systematicity and surface similarity in the development of analogy. Cognitive Science 10. 277–300.Google Scholar
Gick, M. L. & Holyoak, K. J.. 1980. Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology 12. 306–355.Google Scholar
Gick, M. L. & Holyoak, K. J.. 1983. Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology 15. 1–38.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. 2003a. The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. 2008. How toddlers begin to learn verbs. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12(10). 397–403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gordon, P. 2004. Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from Amazonia. Science 306. 406–499.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. & Levinson, S. C.. 1996. Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halford, G. S. 1992. Analogical reasoning and conceptual complexity in cognitive development. Human Development 35(4). 193–218.Google Scholar
Haryu, E., Imai, M. & Okada, H.. In press. Object similarity bootstraps young children to actionbased verb extensions. Child Development.Google Scholar
Haun, D. B. M. & Call, J.. 2009. Great apes' capacities to recognize relational similarity. Cognition 110. 147–159.Google Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R.. 2006. Action meets words: How children learn verbs. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, E. & Agnoli, F.. 1991. The Whorfian hypothesis: A cognitive psychology perspective. Psychological Review 98(3). 377–389.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. 1992. Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. London: A Bradford Book. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kotovsky, L. & Gentner, D.. 1996. Comparison and categorization in the development of relational similarity. Child Development 67. 2797–2822.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. 2003. Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liu, J., Golinkoff, R. M. & Sak, K.. 2001. One cow does not an animal make!: Children can extend novel words at the superordinate level. Child Development 72. 1674–1694.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, J. & Gentner, D.. 2001. Spatial mapping in preschoolers: Close comparisons facilitate far mappings. Journal of Cognition and Development 2(2). 189–219.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, J. & Gentner, D.. 2005. Relational language and the development of relational mapping. Cognitive Psychology 50. 315–353.Google Scholar
Lupyan, G. D., Rakison, H. & McClelland, J. L.. 2007. Language is not just for talking: Redundant labels facilitate learning of novel categories. Psychological Science 18. 1077–1083.Google Scholar
Markman, A. B. & Gentner, D.. 1993a. Splitting the differences: A structural alignment view of similarity. Journal of Memory and Language 32. 517–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markman, A. B. & Gentner, D.. 1993b. Structural alignment during similarity comparisons. Cognitive Psychology 25. 431–467.Google Scholar
Meck, W. H. & Church, R. M.. 1983. A mode control model of counting and timing processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 9. 320–324.Google Scholar
Mix, K. S. 2002. The construction of number concepts. Cognitive Development 17. 1345–1363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mix, K. S., Sandhofer, C. M. & Baroody, A. J.. 2005. Number words and number concepts: The interplay of verbal and nonverbal quantification in early childhood. In Kail, R. V. (ed.), Advances in child development and behavior, Volume 33, 305–346. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Namy, L. L. & Gentner, D.. 2002. Making a silk purse out of two sows' ears: Young children's use of comparison in category learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 131. 5–15.Google Scholar
Novick, L. R. 1988. Analogical transfer, problem similarity, and expertise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 14. 510–520.Google Scholar
Oden, D. L., Thompson, R. K. R. & Premack, D.. 2001. Can an ape reason analogically? Comprehension and production of analogical problems by Sarah, a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). In Gentner, D., Holyoak, K. J. & Kokinov, B. (eds.), The analogical mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science, 471–498. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Penn, D. C., Holyoak, K. J. & Povinelli, D. J.. 2008. Darwin's mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and non-human minds. Brain and Behavioral Sciences 31. 109–178.Google Scholar
Pica, P., Lemer, C., Izard, V. & Dehaene, S.. 2004. Exact and approximate arithmetic in an amazonian indigene group. Science 306. 499–503.Google Scholar
Premack, D. 1983. The codes of man and beasts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6. 125–167.Google Scholar
Pruden, S., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Shallcross, W. L. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2008. Foundations of verb learning: Comparison helps infants abstract event components. In Chan, H., Jacob, H., & Kapia, E. (eds.), Proceedings of the 32st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 2, 402–414. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Richland, L. E., Morrison, R. G. & Holyoak, K. J.. 2006. Children's development of analogical reasoning: Insights from scene analogy problems. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 94. 249–271.Google Scholar
Rips, L. J., Bloomfield, A. & Asmuth, J.. 2008. From numerical concepts to concepts of number. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31. 623–642.Google Scholar
Ross, B. H. 1987. This is like that: The use of earlier problems and the separation of similarity effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 13(4). 629–639.Google Scholar
Simms, N. & Gentner, D.. 2008. Spatial language and landmark use: Can 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds find the middle? In Love, B. C., McRae, K. & Sloutsky, V. M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 191–196. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. 1991. Learning to think for speaking: Native language, cognition, and rhetorical style. Pragmatics 1. 7–26.Google Scholar
Smith, L. B., Jones, S. S. & Landau, B.. 1992. Count nouns, adjectives, and perceptual properties in children's novel word interpretations. Developmental Psychology 28. 273–286.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S. 2000. Core knowledge. American Psychologist 55(11). 1233–1243.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S. & Tsivkin, S.. 2001. Initial knowledge and conceptual change: Space and number. In Bowerman, M. & Levinson, S. C. (eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development, 70–100. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, C. A. & Opfer, J. E.. In press. How 15 hundred is like 15 cherries: Effect of progressive alignment on representational changes in numerical cognition. Child Development.Google Scholar
Waxman, S. R. & Klibanoff, R. S.. 2000. The role of comparison in the extension of novel adjectives. Developmental Psychology 36. 571–581.Google Scholar
Waxman, S. R. & Markow, D. B.. 1995. Words as invitations to form categories: Evidence from 12- to 13-month-old infants. Cognitive Psychology 29. 257–302.Google Scholar
Whorf, B. L. 1956. Language, thought and reality: Selected writings. Cambridge, MA: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Wolff, P. & Holmes, K.. In press. Linguistic Relativity. To appear in WIREs Cognitive Science.Google Scholar
Wynn, K. 1990. Children's understanding of counting. Cognition 36. 155–193.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. 1962. Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Original work published 1934.Google Scholar
Xu, F. 2007. Concept formation and language development: Count nouns and object kinds. In Gaskell, G. (ed.), Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics, 627–634. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yan, J., Forbus, K. & Gentner, D.. 2003. A theory of re-representation in analogical matching. In Alterman, R. & Kirsh, D. (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 1265–1270.Google Scholar