Dedre Gentner

About

Dedre Gentner is a Professor of Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, with a background in psychology. She earned her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 1974. Her research focuses on learning, reasoning, and conceptual change in both adults and children, with particular emphasis on processes of similarity, metaphor, and analogy, as well as mental models and the acquisition of meaning. Her work explores how individuals develop understanding through these cognitive processes, contributing to the fields of psychology and education.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Information Retrieval
• Linguistics
• Cognitive psychology
• Cognitive science
• Computer vision
• Mathematics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Metaphor Comprehension: From Comparison to Categorization

  Psychology Press eBooks · 2020 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In this paper, we explore the relationship between metaphor and polysemy. We begin by discussing how novel metaphoric mappings can create new word meanings in the form of domain-general representations. Turning next to consider the implications of this view for the on-line comprehension of figurative language, we suggest that there is a shift from comparison processing to categorization processing as metaphors are conventionalized. Finally, we describe a series of experimental findings that supp…

  DOI

• Analogy Generation in Science Experts and Novices

  Cognitive Science · 2021-09-01 · 25 citations

  articleOpen access

  There is a critical inconsistency in the literature on analogical retrieval. On the one hand, a vast set of laboratory studies has found that people often fail to retrieve past experiences that share deep relational commonalities, even when they would be useful for reasoning about a current problem. On the other hand, historical studies and naturalistic research show clear evidence of remindings based on deep relational commonalities. Here, we examine a possible explanation for this inconsistenc…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Learning same and different relations: cross-species comparisons

  Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · 2020 · 21 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Relational Language Facilitates Analogy in Children

  2022-05-10 · 18 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  One important function of language is to name relations. Pre-school children performed a simple mapping task with and without hearing spatial prepositions calling attention to key relations. Children at 44 months were successful only if they were in the language condition. By 49 months, children were competent on the task regardless of condition, although there were still benefits of language. These results suggests that re-lational language can therefore be an important tool for high-lighting r…

  PublisherDOI

• On Plates, Bowls, and Dishes: Factors in the Use of English IN and ON

  2022-05-10 · 11 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Previous researchers on the semantics of spatial relational terms have reported the importance of geometric factors (e.g., Bennett, 1975; Talmy, 1983), the importance of functional factors (e.g., Coventry, Carmichael, and Garrod, 1994; Vandeloise, 1991), and the lack of importance of the nature of the Figure, or object located (e.g., Landau and Stecker, 1990; Talmy, 1983). In this paper, we present the results of an experiment testing each of these claims for the English spatial prepositions IN…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Building Global Climate Change Literacy through Analogical Reasoning

  NSF · $93k · 2010–2013

• The Structure of Similarity

  NSF · $79k · 1988–1990

Frequent coauthors

• Kenneth D. Forbus

  51 shared

• Arthur B. Markman

  The University of Texas at Austin

  24 shared

• Susan Goldin‐Meadow

  18 shared

• Nina Simms

  Northwestern University

  16 shared

• Bryan J. Matlen

  American Society For Engineering Education

  14 shared

• Micah B. Goldwater

  University of Sydney

  14 shared

• Mary Jo Rattermann

  Resource (United States)

  14 shared

• Stella Christie

  Tsinghua University

  14 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology

  Stanford University

  1981

• M.A., Cognitive Psychology

  Stanford University

  1976

• B.A., Psychology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1973

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Larry Hedgesh-99
• Dan P. McAdamsh-90
• James P. Spillaneh-63