Poster #118 - The link between relational language and relational thinking

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Relational concepts are critical for higher order cognition. For example, to understand science, one must reason about the relations of causation and prevention (Gentner, 2016). In fact, our ability to recognize and reason relations is one of the major reasons that accounts for our high intelligence as a species (Gentner, 2003). Yet, learning relational words is challenging for children. Once they start using relational language, they exhibit significant changes on they think about relations (Gentner, 2016). Although there is a strong link between children’s relational language and relational thinking, it might not be entirely explained by children’s acquisition and frequency of producing relational words (Miller et al., 2016). We examine (1) whether comprehension of relational language relates to the production of it and (2) the ways in which relational language is linked to relational thinking.
Twenty-three 4-year-old children (Mage= 46 months, SD= 2.45) were tested on their production and comprehension of relational language. In the production part, the experimenter placed the objects to certain locations and the child was asked to describe these locations to the confederate, who could not see where the object was placed. In the comprehension part, the experimenter asked the child to put the toy baby to certain locations (Figure 1). Children were also given relational thinking tasks, which required them to a) mentally transform target shapes –Children’s Mental Transformation Task (CMTT) task (Levine et al., 1999), and b) notice and match relations between certain shapes –Relational Matching-To-Sample (RMTS) task (Smirnova et al., 2015) (Figure 2a & 2b). For CMTT, children were presented with two halves of a shape that had been divided and were asked to point to one of the figures these two halves would make. For the RMTS, children were asked to point to the choice card that resembled the sample card the most. This task consisted of identity matches and relational matches. They were also given an Expressive Language Test to assess their overall expressive vocabulary.
Preliminary results showed that children’s production and comprehension of relational language positively correlated, r(21)=.62, p< .01. Further, higher scores on the RMTS task also indicated higher scores on the CMTT task, r(20)=.53, p<.05. Importantly, we found a link between relational language and relational thinking such that performance on the RMTS task was related to children’s performance on the production part of the language task, r(21)=.47, p< .05. When the two different stimuli (i.e. identity and relational matches) of the RMTS task were analyzed separately, we found that children who successfully noticed the relational matches were better in both production, r(21)=.43, p<.05, and comprehension parts of the language task, r(21)=.49, p<.05. On the other hand, the CMTT task correlated with children’s total vocabulary knowledge.
These preliminary correlational findings suggest that the amount of relational language produced is related to the extent to which it is comprehended at preschool age. Production and comprehension of relational language can be affected by different mechanisms where the ability to understand relations is the key aspect in gaining competence in relational language.

Authors

• Eylul Turan, Koc University
  Presenting Author

• Aslı Aktan Erciyes, Koç University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dila Naz Yazıcı, Koc University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Selin Songül Ertaş, Koc University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tilbe Göksun, Koç University
  Non-Presenting Author