Can Children Develop New Tools via Analogical Generalization?

• In Event: Analogy and Cognitive Development

Abstract

While children may be mini-scientists (Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Kuhl, 1999) some recent evidence suggests they are terrible engineers (Cutting, et al., 2014). When presented with a little bucket at the bottom of a tube and given a straight pipe cleaner with which to retrieve the bucket, children under 6 rarely realize to bend the pipe cleaner into a hook. This finding was surprising because in similar contexts New Caledonian crows develop hook tools (Hunt, 1996), who overall make fewer tools than humans.

However, creative problem solving in humans is characterized by analogical generalization from some familiar source to a novel target problem (Cronin & Loewenstein, 2018). Given that preschool children have some analogical problem-solving abilities (Brown & Kane, 1988) perhaps without providing children an analogical source, this research was underestimating their abilities.

We read children a story about how hooks help catching fish to see if this could support their tool innovation. We examined the effects of the source story in two ways. First, in a divergent thinking task where we asked children to generate as many ideas as possible for what a pipe cleaner could be turned into. Second, we examined the effects of the story in the bucket-tube task (a convergent thinking problem). We examined both to see how different task constraints would affect generalization from the story.

There were three conditions. Control: children only performed the bucket-tube task. Divergent Thinking: children first performed the divergent thinking task, then the bucket-tube task. Analogical Story: children first heard the story, then divergent thinking, then bucket-tube.

The bucket-tube task allowed three attempts (Cutting et al., 2014). First, they were given no help. If they succeeded, they were awarded 3 points. If they failed, they were shown a bent pipe cleaner and were asked to try again with a new unbent pipe cleaner. If they succeeded, they were awarded 2 points. If they failed, a pipe cleaner was bent in front of them and were asked to try again with a new unbent pipe cleaner. If they succeed, they were awarded 1 point. If they failed, they received 0 points.

Children aged 3 to 9 (current N = 87; goal N = 120) were split into two age groups: Preschool and School-aged. We analyzed results with a GLM, with fixed factors of Condition and Age, and their interaction. Table 1 and Figure 1 show the key results. Age and Condition interacted because school-aged children were close to ceiling across conditions, while preschool children were significantly helped by the analogical story.

Even though the story helped preschool children, transfer was rarely spontaneous (i.e., hint-free), even for children who thought of a hook in the divergent thinking task. Although the story increased rates of thinking of a hook in the divergent thinking task across ages [ 2= 14.06, p < .001], those who thought of it showed identical rates of solving the bucket-tube task as those who did not. Implications for the development of analogical thinking and creative problem solving will be discussed.

Authors

• Micah B Goldwater, University of Sydney
  Presenting Author

• Kate Ridgway, University of New South Wales
  Non-Presenting Author

• Robyn Waters, University of Sydney
  Non-Presenting Author