2-035 - Development of Relational and Higher-Order Thinking in Context

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Sophisticated, higher-level reasoning relies on many component skills, for instance the ability to notice and represent relations, compare and transform these representations, and make inferences from these knowledge structures. Much of the work on the development of relational reasoning has focused on the cognitive capacities of the individual reasoner; comparatively little has addressed the social and interactional contexts in which relational reasoning develops. This symposium argues for the importance of considering the developing reasoner within a broader social context that helps guide children’s attention to relations and engages them as active participants in learning to reason relationally. Papers are international and represent diverse perspectives on context. Paper 1 explores frequency patterns in parents’ talk that encourages young children to engage in relational and higher-order thinking using longitudinally collected video data of spontaneous family interactions. Paper 2 investigates how bilingual language proficiency relates to relational reasoning skill and sheds light on the cognitive advantages that bilingualism may confer to children during relational reasoning. Paper 3 shifts the child’s role in a learning context from learner to teacher and asks whether young children can evaluate and manipulate the reliability of comparisons to instruct naïve learners. Paper 4 investigates children’s burgeoning understanding of the relationship between conventional representations and the objects they stand for, and speculates how schooling may socialize early reasoning with conventional symbols.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chairs

• Lindsey Engle Richland, University of Chicago

• Nina Simms, University of Chicago

Individual Presentations

• Relational and Higher-Order Thinking in Early Parent-Child Talk - Presenting Author: Cassie Freeman, University of Chicago; Rebecca Frausel, The University of Chicago; Lindsey Engle Richland, University of Chicago; Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago; Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago

• Relationships Between Early Bilingualism and Relational Reasoning - Presenting Author: K. S. Richard Wong, Hong Kong Institute of Education; Conrad Perry, Swinburne University of Technology; Lindsey Engle Richland, University of Chicago; Keith J. Holyoak, University of California, Los Angeles

• Selective Pedagogy: Children Choose the Best Comparison to Teach Others - Presenting Author: Stella Christie, Swarthmore College; David Fialkow, Swarthmore College; Wynter Lastarria, Swarthmore College

• How do Different Views of Objects Relate? Children’s Understanding of Representations of Conventions - Jean-Michel Boucheix, Department of Psychology; Rik Lowe, Curtin University; Presenting Author: Jean-Pierre Thibaut, University of Burgundy