Dedre Gentner
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1541467 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Dedre Gentner |
| NOMBRES | Dedre |
| APELLIDO | Gentner |
| FIRMA | GENTNER D |
| AFILIACIONES | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5120-6688 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 35 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 33 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1978 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
How structure-mapping can improve K-12 education
Comparisons are commonplace in children’s learning and in K-12 education, but teachers are given limited guidance in how best to support students’ comparisons to lead to the strong learning outcomes. Structure mapping theory offers a well-articulated, evidence-based account of how people carry out comparisons and learn from them. The present article reviews this evidence and highlights ways best practices identified in the structure mapping liter…
Structural Alignment and Linguistic Contrast Help Children Learn a Key Principle of Spatial Construction
Spatial representation and reasoning are important in cognition, yet they are challenging for children. Research has shown that comparison can support learning about common spatial structure and that using common labels can facilitate this process. Here, we show that a comparable pattern holds for learning about differences. That is, contrastive labels can promote comparison‐based learning of key spatial differences . In two experiments, 5‐ to 7‐…
Children’s Early Spontaneous Comparisons Predict Later Analogical Reasoning Skills
Laboratory studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of making comparisons on children’s analogical reasoning skills. We extend this finding to an observational dataset comprising 42 children. The prevalence of specific comparisons, which identify a feature of similarity or difference, in children’s spontaneous speech from 14–58 months is associated with higher scores in tests of verbal and non-verbal analogy in 6th grade. We test two pre-regi…
Spatial supports for comparison in educational science images
Images, such as photographs and diagrams, play an important role in the teaching and learning of science. To optimize student learning, educational science images should be designed to facilitate the cognitive processes relevant to comprehension. One such process is comparison, which involves aligning multiple representations on the basis of their common relational structure. This structural alignment process can be facilitated by cognitive suppo…
Perceptual alignment contributes to referential transparency in indirect learning
Relational labeling unlocks inert knowledge
Analogical processes in children’s understanding of spatial representations
We propose that map reading can be construed as a form of analogical mapping. We tested 2 predictions that follow from this claim: First, young children's patterns of performance in map reading tasks should parallel those found in analogical mapping tasks; and, second, children will benefit from guided alignment instructions that help them see the relational correspondences between the map and the space. In 4 experiments, 3-year-olds completed a …
Language as cognitive tool kit
The extreme version of the Whorfian hypothesis-that the language we learn determines how we view the world-has been soundly rejected by linguists and psychologists alike. However, more moderate versions of the idea that language may influence thought have garnered recent empirical support. This article defends 1 such view. I propose that language serves as a cognitive tool kit that allows us to represent and reason in ways that would be impossibl…
Bootstrapping the Mind
Human cognition is striking in its brilliance and its adaptability. How do we get that way? How do we move from the nearly helpless state of infants to the cognitive proficiency that characterizes adults? In this paper I argue, first, that analogical ability is the key factor in our prodigious capacity, and, second, that possession of a symbol system is crucial to the full expression of analogical ability.
Commentary
Commentaries| January 15 2010 Commentary Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health Dedre Gentner Dedre Gentner Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Human Development (1992) 35 (4): 218–221. https://doi.org/10.1159/000277168 Article history Published Online: January 15 2010 Content Tools Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables…
Du bon usage de la pensée analogique
Analogical Reasoning, Psychology of
Analogical reasoning is a kind of reasoning that applies between specific exemplars or cases, in which what is known about one exemplar is used to infer new information about another exemplar. The basic intuition behind analogical reasoning is that when there are substantial parallels across different situations, there are likely to be further parallels.
Naming motion events in Spanish and English
This research asked whether speakers are influenced by systematic semantic patterns in their language in forming new word meanings. We used the novel word mapping technique (Nagy and Gentner 1990) to test whether English and Spanish speakers would show effects of their differing semantic systems in inferring the meanings of novel motion verbs. We also tested for any language-specific effects in inferring novel nouns. Participants were given short…
The Career of Metaphor.
A central question in metaphor research is how metaphors establish mappings between concepts from different domains. The authors propose an evolutionary path based on structure-mapping theory. This hypothesis--the career of metaphor--postulates a shift in mode of mapping from comparison to categorization as metaphors are conventionalized. Moreover, as demonstrated by 3 experiments, this processing shift is reflected in the very language that peop…
Language in Mind
The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world …
Learning and transfer
Teaching by examples and cases is widely used to promote learning, but it varies widely in its effectiveness. The authors test an adaptation to case-based learning that facilitates abstracting problem-solving schemas from examples and using them to solve further problems: analogical encoding, or learning by drawing a comparison across examples. In 3 studies, the authors examined schema abstrac-tion and transfer among novices learning negotiation …
As time goes by
Temporal language is often couched in spatial metaphors. English has been claimed to have two space → time metaphoric systems: the ego-moving metaphor, wherein the observer's context progresses along the time-line towards the future, and the time-moving metaphor, wherein time is conceived of as a river or conveyor belt on which events are moving from the future to the past. In three experiments, we investigated the psychological status of these m…
The Analogical Mind
Analogy has been the focus of extensive research in cognitive science over the past two decades. Through analogy, novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones. Indeed, a case can be made for analogical processing as the very core of cognition. This is the first book to span the full range of disciplines concerned with analogy. Its contributors represent cognitive, developmental, and comparative psychology; neuroscienc…
Individuation, relativity, and early word learning
Which words do children learn earliest, and why? These questions bear on how humans organize the world into semantic concepts, and how children acquire this parsing. A useful perspective is to think of how bits of experience are conflated into the same concept. One possibility is that children are born with the set of conceptual conflations that figures in human language. But assuming (as we will) that most semantic concepts are learned, not inna…
Convention, Form, and Figurative Language Processing
Convention, Form, and Figurative Language Processing
There are 2 basic controversies concerning how metaphors are processed. First, are metaphoric mappings more akin to literal comparisons or to literal categorizations? And second, is metaphor comprehension indirect or direct? We believe that these controversies are more appqent than real and that a unified theoretical framework can be offered that reconciles these opposing views. The central idea is that all metaphors involve structural alignment …
A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning
Structure mapping in analogy and similarity
Analogy and similarity are often assumed to be distinct psychological processes. In contrast to this position, the authors suggest that both similarity and analogy involve a process of structural alignment and mapping, that is, that similarity is like analogy. In this article, the authors first describe the structure-mapping process as it has been worked out for analogy. Then, this view is extended to similarity, where it is used to generate new …
Reasoning and learning by analogy
Structural Alignment during Similarity Comparisons
Reasoning and learning by analogy
Language as cognitive tool kit
The extreme version of the Whorfian hypothesis-that the language we learn determines how we view the world-has been soundly rejected by linguists and psychologists alike. However, more moderate versions of the idea that language may influence thought have garnered recent empirical support. This article defends 1 such view. I propose that language serves as a cognitive tool kit that allows us to represent and reason in ways that would be impossibl…
Analogical processes in children’s understanding of spatial representations
We propose that map reading can be construed as a form of analogical mapping. We tested 2 predictions that follow from this claim: First, young children's patterns of performance in map reading tasks should parallel those found in analogical mapping tasks; and, second, children will benefit from guided alignment instructions that help them see the relational correspondences between the map and the space. In 4 experiments, 3-year-olds completed a …
Integrating verb meanings into context∗
This research investigates the processes by which individual sentence meanings combine into discourse meaning, by tracing the semantic integration process for verb meanings. Subjects heard stories which contained general verbs (e.g., “give”). For half of the subjects, additional semantic information was included in each story. The hypothesis was that this additional information would combine with the meanings of the general verbs to produce the m…
Naming motion events in Spanish and English
This research asked whether speakers are influenced by systematic semantic patterns in their language in forming new word meanings. We used the novel word mapping technique (Nagy and Gentner 1990) to test whether English and Spanish speakers would show effects of their differing semantic systems in inferring the meanings of novel motion verbs. We also tested for any language-specific effects in inferring novel nouns. Participants were given short…
On Relational Meaning
The acquisition of verb meaning is discussed and compared with the acquisition of simple noun meaning. Evidence presented from three experiments with children and adults indicates that (1) verbal meanings are relatively slow to be acquired; (2) the acquisition of verb meaning involves the gradual addition of semantic components; and (3) verbs are used by children and adults with greater breadth of application then are simple nouns. These findings…
Integrating verb meanings into context∗
This research investigates the processes by which individual sentence meanings combine into discourse meaning, by tracing the semantic integration process for verb meanings. Subjects heard stories which contained general verbs (e.g., “give”). For half of the subjects, additional semantic information was included in each story. The hypothesis was that this additional information would combine with the meanings of the general verbs to produce the m…
Structure-mapping
A theory of analogy must describe how the meaning of an analogy is derived from the meanings of its parts. In the structure-mapping theory, the interpretation rules are characterized as implicit rules for mapping knowledge about a base domain into a target domain. Two important features of the theory are (a) the rules depend only on syntactic properties of the knowledge representation, and not on the specific content of the domains; and (b) the t…
Structure‐Mapping
A theory of analogy must describe how the meaning of an analogy is derived from the meanings of its parts. In the structure‐mapping theory, the interpretation rules are characterized as implicit rules for mapping knowledge about a base domain into a target domain. Two important features of the theory are (a) the rules depend only on syntactic properties of the knowledge representation, and not on the specific content of the domains; and (b) the t…
The evolution of mental metaphors in psychology
The evolution of mental metaphors in psychology
It seems plausible that the conception of the mind has evolved over the first hundred years ofpsychology in America . In this research, we studied this evolution by tracing changes in the kinds of metaphors used by psychologists to describe mental phenomena. A corpus ofmetaphors from 1894 to the present was collected and examined . The corpus consisted ofall metaphors for mental phenomena used in the first issue ofPsychological Review in each dec…
Metaphor as Structure Mapping
1988, 59, 47-59. The goal of this research is to clarify the development of metaphor by using structure-mapping theory to make distinctions among kinds of metaphors. In particular, it is proposed that children can understand metaphors based on shared object attributes before those based on shared relational structure. This predicts (1) early ability to interpret metaphors based on shared attributes, (2) a developmental increase in ability to inte…
The structure-mapping engine
The mechanisms of analogical learning
It is widely accepted that similarity is a key determinant of transfer. In this chapter I suggest that both of these venerable terms – similarity and transfer – refer to complex notions that require further differentiation. I approach the problem by a double decomposition: decomposing similarity into finer subclasses and decomposing learning by similarity and analogy into a set of component subprocesses. One thing reminds us of another. Mental ex…
Structural Alignment during Similarity Comparisons
Respects for similarity.
This article reviews the status of similarity as an explanatory construct with a focus on similarity judgments. For similarity to be a useful construct, one must be able to specify the ways or respects in which two things are similar. One solution to this problem is to restrict the notion of similarity to hard-wired perceptual processes. It is argued that this view is too narrow and limiting. Instead, it is proposed that an important source of co…
A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning
Structure mapping in analogy and similarity
Analogy and similarity are often assumed to be distinct psychological processes. In contrast to this position, the authors suggest that both similarity and analogy involve a process of structural alignment and mapping, that is, that similarity is like analogy. In this article, the authors first describe the structure-mapping process as it has been worked out for analogy. Then, this view is extended to similarity, where it is used to generate new …
Reasoning and learning by analogy
The Analogical Mind
Analogy has been the focus of extensive research in cognitive science over the past two decades. Through analogy, novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones. Indeed, a case can be made for analogical processing as the very core of cognition. This is the first book to span the full range of disciplines concerned with analogy. Its contributors represent cognitive, developmental, and comparative psychology; neuroscienc…
Individuation, relativity, and early word learning
Which words do children learn earliest, and why? These questions bear on how humans organize the world into semantic concepts, and how children acquire this parsing. A useful perspective is to think of how bits of experience are conflated into the same concept. One possibility is that children are born with the set of conceptual conflations that figures in human language. But assuming (as we will) that most semantic concepts are learned, not inna…
Convention, Form, and Figurative Language Processing
Convention, Form, and Figurative Language Processing
There are 2 basic controversies concerning how metaphors are processed. First, are metaphoric mappings more akin to literal comparisons or to literal categorizations? And second, is metaphor comprehension indirect or direct? We believe that these controversies are more appqent than real and that a unified theoretical framework can be offered that reconciles these opposing views. The central idea is that all metaphors involve structural alignment …
As time goes by
Temporal language is often couched in spatial metaphors. English has been claimed to have two space → time metaphoric systems: the ego-moving metaphor, wherein the observer's context progresses along the time-line towards the future, and the time-moving metaphor, wherein time is conceived of as a river or conveyor belt on which events are moving from the future to the past. In three experiments, we investigated the psychological status of these m…
Language in Mind
The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world …
Learning and transfer
Teaching by examples and cases is widely used to promote learning, but it varies widely in its effectiveness. The authors test an adaptation to case-based learning that facilitates abstracting problem-solving schemas from examples and using them to solve further problems: analogical encoding, or learning by drawing a comparison across examples. In 3 studies, the authors examined schema abstrac-tion and transfer among novices learning negotiation …
The Career of Metaphor.
A central question in metaphor research is how metaphors establish mappings between concepts from different domains. The authors propose an evolutionary path based on structure-mapping theory. This hypothesis--the career of metaphor--postulates a shift in mode of mapping from comparison to categorization as metaphors are conventionalized. Moreover, as demonstrated by 3 experiments, this processing shift is reflected in the very language that peop…
Analogical Reasoning, Psychology of
Analogical reasoning is a kind of reasoning that applies between specific exemplars or cases, in which what is known about one exemplar is used to infer new information about another exemplar. The basic intuition behind analogical reasoning is that when there are substantial parallels across different situations, there are likely to be further parallels.
Naming motion events in Spanish and English
This research asked whether speakers are influenced by systematic semantic patterns in their language in forming new word meanings. We used the novel word mapping technique (Nagy and Gentner 1990) to test whether English and Spanish speakers would show effects of their differing semantic systems in inferring the meanings of novel motion verbs. We also tested for any language-specific effects in inferring novel nouns. Participants were given short…
Bootstrapping the Mind
Human cognition is striking in its brilliance and its adaptability. How do we get that way? How do we move from the nearly helpless state of infants to the cognitive proficiency that characterizes adults? In this paper I argue, first, that analogical ability is the key factor in our prodigious capacity, and, second, that possession of a symbol system is crucial to the full expression of analogical ability.
Psychology (28 obras) · Computer Science (24 obras) · Linguistics (17 obras) · Cognitive psychology (15 obras) · Child and Animal Learning Development (14 obras) · Philosophy (14 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (13 obras) · Cognitive science (12 obras) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (12 obras) · Analogy (10 obras)