Abstract Relations: Same-Different Conceptualization in Children and Adults

Relational tasks involve abstract concepts such as sameness or difference between stimuli. A relational task is thought to require higher-order cognition, because it requires abstraction beyond the perceptual cues of the stimuli. Adult humans have no issue learning these abstract relations, but young children and animals find these tasks difficult (Smith & Church, 2021). Whether these differences are due to adult humans’ more developed general abilities to abstract, or their ease of applying abstract symbols because of language, is unclear. The purpose of this study was to explore children’s ability at different ages to learn and take instruction from abstract visual symbols to guide relational matching on the basis of shape and color. We also wanted to determine whether their symbol use generalizes to novel shapes and colors, and whether it is bidirectional. Method: Adults and children (5-8) completed a series of seven tasks of increasing complexity that included two pairs of objects and a symbol presented at the top (an X or O).  Participants then chose the pair instructed by the symbol and received feedback.  Complexity of the tasks increased, until correct performance could only be achieved if the participant understood the instruction from the symbol on a trial-by-trial basis (Task 5) and had the ability to generalize to novel colors and shapes (Task 6).  Task 7, the final task, presented a single pair of objects and had participants choose which symbol best fit the presented pair in order to assess bidirectional use of the symbols. Results showed that the adult participants have the ability to quickly learn to take instruction from the symbols as well as generalize to novel shapes and colors and utilize the symbols bidirectionally.  Seven- to eight-year-old children also have these abilities. However, 5-6 year-olds generalized more to new colors than shapes, and could not use the symbols bidirectionally.  The ability to learn symbols to aid relational processing develops around age seven.  There is a developmental change between the age groups of 5-6 and 7-8 in symbol abstraction.