Analogical Reasoning in Young Children

We conducted two experiments to assess the performance of 4- and 5-year-olds on geometric analogy tasks. Each task consisted of 16 analogy problems that were presented in a manipulative, gamelike context and that used attribute blocks that varied on the dimensions of color, size, and shape. Experiment 1 was a preliminary test of the analogical reasoning abilities of 4- and 5-year-olds. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that many of the preschoolers were capable of applying analogical reasoning in the solution of geometric analogy problems of the form A:B::C:?. We also found that children who did not consistently reason analogically showed evidence of a reasoning strategy that was governed by a hierarchical rule structure. Experiment 2, in which a modified version of the geometric analogy task in Experiment 1 was used, confirmed the findings of the initial experiment with regard to the analogical reasoning ability of 4- and 5-year-olds. The rule structure was verified for nonanalogical reasoners, whereas analogical reasoners generally exhibited no consistent pattern in their response errors.