Park, Youjeong2015-08-202020-05-242015-05-24bibid: 9255494https://hdl.handle.net/1813/40740The present study investigated whether the perceptual simplicity of the objects depicting relations could facilitate young children's performance on a spatial analogies task. In Study 1, children of 3 to 5 years (N = 120) were asked to generalize spatial relations to instances comprised of a novel type of objects (cross-type generalization). Children were randomly assigned to generalize spatial relations either from a schematic sample image (i.e., geometric shapes) to three rich choice images (i.e., line drawings of realistic objects) or from a rich sample image to three schematic choice images. Children across age performed better with the schematic samples than with rich samples. Study 2 examined generalization of spatial relations to instances comprised of similar types of objects, in children of the same age range (N = 121). In this within-type generalization test, only 5year-old children, but not 3- or 4-year-old children, benefited from the schematic samples. The results overall indicate that perceptually simple objects are more effective in facilitating young children's generalization of spatial relations than perceptually rich objects. Additionally, across both studies, young children's spatial vocabulary, especially their acquisition of locative terms, was positively associated with their spatial analogy skills, suggesting an intimate link between particular spatial words and spatial analogies. Keywords: spatial analogies, generalization, object features, relational learning, spatial vocabularyen-USspatial analogiesspatial vocabularyobject featuresdissertation or thesis