Peer-reviewed article

Beyond same and different: Explanation supports young children's relational reasoning across semantic domains.

Jiyue Yang, Sophia W Deng · 28 Jul 2026

Abstract

Young children often struggle with reasoning based on abstract relations, which is critical to learning and thinking. Although this ability improves with development, the processes that support this transition remain poorly understood. This study examined whether prompting children to generate verbal explanations facilitates relational reasoning. Seventy-nine 4- and 5-year-old children participated in a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task involving category and thematic relations. Some children were required to complete the matching task individually, while others interacted with an experimenter who demonstrated relational matches and engaged in generating explanations or reports. Results indicated that children who were asked to explain exhibitedsignificantly higher proportions of relational matches compared to those who completed the task individually and to the chance level, suggesting that generating explanations facilitated young children's relational reasoning. Further analysis revealed individual differences in the effectiveness of explanation: Children who primarily used relational language in their explanations showed significantly more relational matches and clear relational reasoning preferences than those who provided other types of explanations or those who merely reported. Overall, these findings suggest that prompting children to explain can support their use of abstract relations across semantic domains in reasoning, and that the use of relational language serves as an indicator of successful relational reasoning.