CAREER: Diversity in Learning Contexts and the Emergence of Abstract Reasoning

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

Relational reasoning is the ability to go beyond direct, perceptual experience to engage in abstract thought. It a defining feature of human cognition and critical for scientific thinking. However, young learners often struggle to prioritize abstract concepts, like same and different, over salient, but often less informative properties, like color or shape. The investigator will explore how distinct learning environments may shape children’s tendency to engage in relational reasoning to better understand what circumstances facilitate (or suppress) this ability. This project will engage in cross-cultural work to examine if and how naturally-occurring differences in environmental input influence the early expression of abstract thought. Additional research will assess whether specific learning environments may be manipulated to facilitate skills for abstraction in children. This work challenges existing theories that posit the gradual, linear emergence of relational reasoning, and will generate an empirical foundation for thinking broadly about cognitive diversity. Further, establishing competence in abstract reasoning provides an incentive for designing learning environments to support recognition of these concepts from an early age. The proposed work tests the claim that although relational reasoning emerges early, children tend to neglect abstract similarity due to a learned bias to attend to object properties. This account predicts that variation in children’s environmental input should lead to distinct cognitive biases and corresponding differences in the expression of abstract thought. The investigator will apply a three-pronged strategy to assess this account. Aim 1 will evaluate the robustness of early competence in relational reasoning in 18-30-month-olds in two different cultural contexts to assess whether their previously reported success results from genuine conceptual understanding. Aim 2 will characterize differences in object- and relational-focus in 3-year-olds across additional cultures and document effects on reasoning. This will evaluate claims that differences in lexical bias and context-sensitivity influence the emergence of abstract thought. Aim 3 will assess the causal role of contextual factors on reasoning in children by manipulating features of the learning environment. Together, these aims test the claim that early challenges associated with relational reasoning do not result from a lack of competence, but rather a difference in tendency that stems from children’s failure to recognize when to apply their knowledge. This approach promotes the investigation of diverse populations and challenges the prevailing view that children’s reasoning universally develops as a bottom-up, emergent process. Findings from this project will advance our understanding of how regularities in the environment may set the developing child on different learning trajectories. This project is co-funded by the SBE/BCS Science of Learning and Augmented Intelligence, the Discovery Research preK-12 (DRK-12), and the EHR Core Research (ECR) Programs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.