The development of concept formation in children

I. Theory The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of concept formation in children. The study was focused upon two aspects: 1. Changes in the mode of approach to a task of concept formation as a function of the developmental level of the child. Developmental differences in concept formation as a response to variation in material. From Piaget's theoretical concepts behavioral indices of concept formation were derived. With the younger age group, it had been stated that cognitive functions were influenced by perceptual dominance. When confronted with a situation in which changes in relationships occur, the child is unable to free himself from the perceptual aspects of the immediate stimuli. The younger age child is unable to combine successive actions and holds rigidly to a set. Older children when confronted with such a situation in which there is a change combine the several events and are able to disregard immediate stimuli, if they are irrelevant. The older child can make generalizations regarding a problem regarding a problem but this also goes through a period of differentiation. That is, the child from about 9 - 11 can make generalizations but these are based upon the manipulation of the concrete aspects of the situation. From about 11 years of age, the child is able to formulate hypotheses from the material, is relatively free from the concrete aspects, and does not find it necessary to go through a process of manipulation in order to derive hypothesis. From these considerations, certain behaviors would be expected from children in the different age groups when confronted with a concept formation task [TRUNCATED]

Grantor dc:publisher

Boston University

Year dc:date.issued

1962

Author dc:creator

• Blackwell, Amelia Alvord

• Child development
• Children

Statement dc:rights

• Based on investigation of the BU Libraries' staff, this work is free of known copyright restrictions.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Dc Identifier Other

b14672935

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.bu.edu:2144/27985