The Influence of Analogy in Children's Acquisition of New Information from Text : An Exploratory Study. Technical Report No. 281 / Stella Vosniadou and Andrew Ortony.

A study examined the influence of extended analogies on the comprehension of unfamiliar texts by primary grade children. Subjects, 16 first- and 16 third-grade children, listened to two passages that described how the blood circulates in the body and how an infection heals. The passages were presented either with or without analogies. The children were asked to recall the information contained in the passages and to answer a number of factual and inferential questions. Results showed that at each grade level, the analogy group performed better than the no analogy group. The children made certain kinds of inferential errors, such as attributing human feelings and emotions to inanimate things, but these occurred irrespective of the presence or absence of analogies. The results suggest that analogy can be an effective mechanism for transferring knowledge from a familiar to an unfamiliar domain, a mechanism that not only adults but also children can use effectively. (The passages used in the study are appended.) (Author/FL)

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