Concept Utilization in Children's Sorting Behavior as a Function of Age

Abstract

90 nursery school-aged children from 3 to 6 yr. Of age were given either a conceptual, a half-conceptual, or a nonconceptual sorting task. The youngest (3 yr.) children learned the three tasks almost at the same rate and the older (6 yr.) children learned the conceptual task faster and half-conceptual task slower than nonconceptual task, which showed no significant age difference. These were interpreted to show that the rate of learning instance-response associations remains constant from 3 to 6 yr. of age, whereas children's ability to use concepts in learning the sorting tasks increases through these ages.