.3 Years Old, 5-year-old Children Analogy To The Experimental Study Of Reasoning Abilities

Whether 3-year-old or younger children can use analogical reasoning in problem- solving is an interesting question being quarreled a lot. Many authors proposed that preschoolers can抰 perform analogical reasoning in cognitive task until 4 or 5-year-old (e.g. Zha Zixiu,1984,1985;Wan Yatong,1992). Some authors declared that 3-year-old children can perform analogical reasoning in cognitive task. But the standard they used to determine whether the children can perform analogical reasoning is not strict enough (e.g. Goswami, 1998). We studied their reports and proposed our assumption: (1) analogical reasoning is within the capacity of 3-year-old children; (2) some authors?fail to find this kind of capacity is due to the experimental material they used is disadvantageous to the younger children to perform well in the reasoning tasks. The present study was conducted to test our assumption. We designed two tasks with geometric figures and pictures of objects following the above authors and redesigned two corresponding tasks, which are accord with the cognitive characteristics of young children. In the redesigned tasks, we used geometric models instead of geometric figures printed on paper and added a stoly before the subjects begin to complete the task using pictures of objects. We also asked the subjects to operate the geometric models with their hands when they were thinking about the task. The story before the reasoning task gives the subjects prepared knowledge, which makes sure that the objects appearing in the task are within the subject抯 knowledge. Forty 3-year-old and forty 5-year-old children were selected as our subjects. In each age group, the subjects were divided into two groups. In each group, the numbers of boys and girls were equal. One group took part in completing two tasks designed following the above authors, and the other group book part in completing two tasks redesigned. The results support our assumption strongly. We find significant age effects. The differences between two subjects group are all significant. There is no sex difference in analogical reasoning of the children aged 3 and 5. These results suggested that subjects in performing analogical reasoning tasks designed within the younger children抯 cognitive capacity show the capacity of analogical reasoning. 3-year-old children can perform analogical reasoning in cognitive task.