Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:11:20.787Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Analogy and the brain: A new perspective on relational primacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2008

Usha Goswami
Affiliation:
Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Faculty of Education, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ, United Kingdom. [email protected]://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/centres/neuroscience/

Abstract

Leech et al.'s demonstration that analogical reasoning can be an emergent property of low-level incremental learning processes is critical for analogical theory. Along with insights into neural learning based on the salience of dynamic spatio-temporal structure, and the neural priming mechanism of repetition suppression, it establishes relational primacy as a plausible theoretical description of how brains make analogies.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arterberry, M. E. & Bornstein, M. H. (2001) Three-month-old infants' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static and dynamic attributes. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 80:333–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barsalou, L. W., Simmons, W. K., Barbey, A. K. & Wilson, C. D. (2003) Grounding conceptual knowledge in modality-specific systems. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:8491.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dehaene, S., Naccache, L., Cohen, L., LeBihan, D., Mangin, J. F., Poline, J. B. & Rivière, D. (2001) Cerebral mechanisms of word masking and unconscious repetition priming. Nature Neuroscience 4:752–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elman, J. L. (2005) Connectionist models of cognitive development: Where next? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(3):111–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Freudenthal, D., Pine, J. M. & Gobet, F. (2006) Modelling the development of children's use of optional infinitives in Dutch and English using MOSAIC. Cognitive Science 30:277310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gelman, S. A. & Coley, J. D. (1990) The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird: Categories and inferences in 2-year-old children. Developmental Psychology 26:796804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U. (2008) Cognitive development: The learning brain. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Greco, C., Hayne, H. & Rovee-Collier, C. (1990) Roles of function, reminding and variability in categorization by 3-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 16:617–33.Google ScholarPubMed
Naccache, L. & Dehaene, S. (2001) The priming method: Imaging unconscious repetition priming reveals an abstract representation of number in the parietal lobes. Cerebral Cortex 11:966–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noesselt, N., Rieger, J. W., Schoenfeld, M. A., Kanowski, M., Hinrichs, H., Heinze, H.-J. & Driver, J. (2007) Audiovisual temporal correspondence modulates human multisensory superior temporal sulcus plus primary sensory cortices. Journal of Neuroscience 27:11431–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Riecke, L., van Opstal, A. J., Goebel, R. & Formisano, E. (2007) Hearing illusory sounds in noise: Sensory-perceptual transformations in primary auditory cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 27:12684–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosch, E. (1978) Principles of categorisation. In: Cognition and categorisation, ed. Rosch, E. & Lloyd, B. B., pp. 2748. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S. (1994) Initial knowledge: Six suggestions. Cognition 50:431–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in society. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar