Analogical reasoning and the nature of context

A research note

Bibliographic Data

ID9614738
AuthorsKen Richardson (0000-0003-1271-5962, The Open University, corresponding author), David S Webster (Durham University)
Year1996
Volume66
Issue1
Pages23-32
Publication date1996-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Educational Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0998 • E-ISSN: 2044-8279
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.2044-8279.1996.tb01173.x
PMID8901169
OpenAlexW2140812506
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited4

Recent theorising about children's reasoning has tended to move towards a ‘contextualist’ view of cognition and away from the idea of an overall, context‐free, mechanism, varying in efficiency, which is the presupposition underlying traditional standardised reasoning tests. An earlier study suggesting improved reasoning performance among children on socio‐cognitively meaningful versions of Raven's Matrices tended to support this shift. The main purpose of the study reported here was to observe whether a similar improvement would be found with contextually‐based analogical reasoning problems as well. Ten analogy items from a standardised test were administered to 11‐year‐olds together with 10 structurally‐equivalent knowledge‐based items. The results reflected improved performance on the latter, overall, and additional analyses led to further suggestions about the nature of the ‘contextual advantage’ and the origins of item difficulty

Analogical reasoning · Analogy · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Presupposition · Raven's Progressive Matrices · Test (biology) · Verbal reasoning · Child and Animal Learning Development · Cognitive Abilities and Testing · Cognitive Science and Mapping · Psychology

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