Comparison and categorization in the development of relational similarity

4 experiments investigated the development of children's ability to recognize perceptual relational commonalities such as symmetry or monotonicity. In Experiment 1, 6- and 8-year-olds were able to recognize higher-order relational similarity across different dimensions (e.g., size/saturation) and across different polarities (e.g., increase/decrease), whereas 4-year-olds could recognize higher-order relational matches only when they were supported by lower-order commonalities (e.g., size/size but not size/saturation matches). Further experiments tested how the processes of comparison and categorization affected 4-year-olds' ability to recognize relational similarity. The results of the experiments supported the hypothesis that comparison and categorization processes lead to changes in children's representations of relational structure, enabling them to recognize more abstract commonalities. A computational model lent further support to the claims.