Analogies: Devon's Fast, Associative Answers
Mr. Bello gives a small group of nine-year-olds five written analogies and asks them to say each one as a full sentence before choosing a word: (1) kitten is to cat as puppy is to ___; (2) glove is to hand as sock is to ___; (3) bird is to nest as bee is to ___; (4) happy is to sad as tall is to ___; (5) library is to books as museum is to ___.
Devon answers dog, foot, flower, short, and artist. He finishes in under two minutes, well ahead of the group, and does not reread any item. When asked about item 3 he says, 'Bees go to flowers. That is where you see them.' About item 5 he says, 'Paintings remind me of artists.' On items 1, 2, and 4 he can state the sentence without help: 'a puppy grows into a dog,' 'a sock goes on a foot,' 'short is the opposite of tall.'
The corrected items are dog, foot, hive, short, paintings.
1. Classify each of the five analogies by the relation it uses, and explain why the classification matters for diagnosing Devon.
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- kitten : cat - young to adult of the same kind. Answer: dog.
- glove : hand - item and the body part it is worn on or covers. Answer: foot.
- bird : nest - animal and the place it lives. Answer: hive.
- happy : sad - opposites. Answer: short.
- library : books - place and the things it holds. Answer: paintings.
Why it matters: the five items use five different relations, and each relation is fixed by the first pair before the child looks at the choices. That is the whole skill being measured. Devon's three correct answers are exactly the three items where the relation is easy to say in a short sentence he already owns ('grows into,' 'goes on,' 'opposite of'). His two errors are the two items where the correct relation is a place or home relation and a strong everyday association competes with it. The classification shows the errors are not spread randomly across relation types.
2. Explain why items 3 and 5 are the same kind of error, and why neither should be recorded as carelessness.
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Both are association errors. Devon links the two words by how often he has seen them together in the world, not by the relation the first pair establishes. Bees are seen on flowers; paintings call to mind the people who make them. Those links are strong, fast, and correct as facts, which is exactly why they win when no sentence is stated first.
Item 5 also shows a direction error. He generated an associate of the fourth word (paintings → artist) instead of treating the third word (museum) as the subject. The sentence 'a museum holds paintings' would have blocked this; 'paintings remind me of artists' does not.
Not carelessness: when asked, he can produce the correct sentence forms on items 1, 2, and 4, so the strategy is available to him. He simply skips it when working quickly, and the skip only costs him points on items with a strong competing association. That is a strategy-selection problem, not a knowledge gap, so the remedy is a mandatory step - say or write the sentence before touching the choices - rather than more practice items of the same kind.
3. Design one transfer item that would show whether the fix worked, and explain the design choices.
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Use an item where the tempting association is strong but the required relation is different, and where the right answer is not the most vivid word in the list.
Item: 'Doctor is to hospital as farmer is to ___ (field, tractor, crops, animals).' The relation is person to workplace, so the answer is field. Tractor and crops are the strongest associates of 'farmer' and both fail the relation; animals is a weaker associate and also fails.
Design choices: (a) the correct answer is the least exciting word, so a child cannot win by picking the most imageable option; (b) both tempting associates are grammatically possible in the blank, so the sentence test is the only way through; (c) it uses a relation (workplace) that Devon has not been drilled on, which tests transfer rather than memorised pairs.
Scoring: accept the answer only with an unprompted sentence such as 'a farmer works in a field.' A correct word alone is weak evidence because he may guess; the sentence is what shows the strategy is now automatic. Pair it with one item where the strongest associate happens to be correct, so he cannot succeed by simply avoiding associates.