Can Analogy Help Children Make Transitive Inference?

This paper is exploring whether analogy-making as an early developing ability could potentially help children to develop deductive reasoning ability and in particular, transitive inference. Two experiments are presented. In the first one transitive mapping is explored further to make sure children at the age of 4 can do the transitive mapping task even when all three objects are hidden and no perceptual clues are available. After demonstrating that children can do that, the second experiment shows that the train analogy can help children correctly solve the transitive inference task. The empirical findings support Halford’s suggestions that deductive reasoning is being developed on the basis of children’s ability