Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

There is a large body of evidence showing that comparison leads to better conceptualization and generalization of novelnames than no-comparison settings in typically developing (TD) children (e.g., Gentner, 2010). So far, comparison situa-tions have not been studied with children with intellectual disabilities (ID) (Chapman & Kay-Raining Bird, 2012). In thepresent research children with ID and TD children matched on mental age with the Ravens coloured progressive matricesRCPM (Raven, 1965) were tested in several comparison conditions. We manipulated the conceptual distance betweenstimuli in the learning phase and between the learning phase stimuli and the generalization phase stimuli for object andrelational nouns. Results showed that overall both populations had rather similar performance profile when matched ontheir cognitive skills (low vs. high functioning). Unexpectedly, ID childrens performance was equivalent or better thantheir TD peers. We discuss our results in terms of the role of conceptual distance on participants conceptual generalizationas a function of their intellectual abilities and cognitive functioning.