Verbal analogical reasoning: an essential cognitive ability of written production

Abstract

Writing enables individuals to reason in or with language: metalanguage (Ravid y Tolchinsky, 2002). This ability requires both linguistic knowledge and  cognitive  abilities,  so  it  can  develop  accordingly.  One  of  the  pivotal components  of  cognition  is  the  capacity  to  reason  in  an  analogical  way (Goswami y Brown, 1990). The purpose of this paper is research into the potential relation between both variables: text production and analogical reasoning. To that purpose, two objectives have been pursued: (a) to inquire into the verbal analogical reasoning as a cognitive ability essential to the writing of narrative texts; and (b) to determine the incidence of this ability in the metalanguage level. A group of 258 third graders were studied to establish a correlation between their analogical reasoning and their produc-tion of narrative texts. A writing test and verbal analogical reasoning tests were administered. Preliminary findings indicate that there is a correlation between  both  variables;  however,  it  can  be  observed  that  some  writing-specific areas seem to depend more on other kinds of knowledge than on uniquely the verbal analogical reasoning.