The role of executive functions in the development of analogy-making abilities : a mulitdisciplinary approach – ANAFONEX

The present project deals with the relation between analogy-making and executive functioning in children and nonhuman primates. The main hypotheses that structure this project represent a significant departure from the traditional way of looking at analogy making. First, we believe that the development of children’s analogy-making abilities is driven, not only by increased knowledge about the world, but also by their improvements in executive functioning, in general, and in inhibitory control and flexibility, in particular. The central hypotheses concerning the role of executive functions in children’s analogy-making are relatively new. However, Richland et al. (2006, 2009) with children, Krawczyk et al. (2008) with patients with frontal-lobe damage, Viskontas et al., (2004) in cognitive aging are also working on these ideas.
Second, we claim that children’s ability to restructure their representations of objects and events to fit a particular, novel context also lies at the heart of analogy-making. Particularly, we think that analogy making is not a forward process in which a relation found between a pair of items (A-B) is mapped on the second pair (C-D) but rather involves back-and-forth comparisons between the pairs of elements involved (e.g., Chalmers, French & Hofstadter, 1992 in contrast with Leech et al., 2008). We have developed experimental protocols in which the participant is forced to restructure his/her initial representation of A:B in order to find the correct analogical answer.
Our experimental protocols will be designed in order to understand the role of the development of executive functioning (EF) in analogy making, particularly inhibition and cognitive flexibility. To this end we will, first, apply a battery of independently motivated (i.e., not involving analogy-making per se) EF tests at various ages and, second, manipulate the executive costs of the tasks in an attempt to demonstrate the key role of EF in analogy-making.
We will not only rely on methodologies similar to that used in our recent works on these questions (voir Thibaut, French, Vezneva, 2008, 2009, in press), but, also using new methods in the field. In particular, we will use an eye-tracker to study the mechanisms of analogy-making, comparing different age groups’ fixation patterns. For the moment, with the exception of a paper by Gordon & Moser (2007) in which adults were studied, no other work has been done using this type of equipment to explore the processes underlying analogy-making.
Our project also has an important comparative aspect in which we will assess analogical reasoning in nonhuman primates in relation to executive functions. As far as we know, this is the first time that these two issues will be connected. Premack (1983) argued that analogical reasoning was only possible after language training, a proposal that supports the prevalent idea in the developmental literature (e.g., Gentner & Christies, in press) that language and symbol use promote relational understanding. Fagot has recently challenged this idea, using a relational matching to sample (RMTS) procedure (Fagot, Wasserman & Young, 2001, Fagot & Parron, in press). The demonstration of analogical abilities in monkeys opens avenues of study involving the relationships between analogical reasoning and executive functions in animals. Finally these concepts (inhibition, flexibility, restructuring) will be integrated into a new computer model based on a recent connectionist model of analogy-making introduced by Paul Munro, an American cognitive scientist, who will join our team.