Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Young children's performance on certain mapping tasks can be improved by introducing relational language (Gentner, 1998). We show that children's performance on a spatial mapping task can be modeled using the Structure-Mapping Engine (SME) to simulate the comparisons involved. To model the effects of relational language in our simulations, we vary the quantity and nature of the spatial relations and object descriptions represented. The results reproduce the trends observed in the developmental studies of Loewenstein & Gentner (1998; in preparation). The results of these simulations are consistent with the claim that gains in relational representation are a major contributor to the development of spatial mapping ability. We further suggest that relational language can promote relational representation.