Still no solution to non-verbal measures of analogical reasoning: Reply to Walker and Gopnik (2017)

Abstract

Walker and Gopnik (2017) suggest they have solved a longstanding problem in comparative and developmental psychology: How to provide an unambiguous measure of analogical reasoning in nonverbal subjects. We argue that this test, much like many others that purport to measure analogical reasoning in nonverbal subjects, does not distinguish between the two competing accounts of successful performance: the use of perceptual variance among stimuli to support higher-order concepts like "same" and "different" versus use of perceptual variance alone.

Keywords: Analogical reasoning; Animal cognition; Nonverbal cognition; Relational match-to-sample.