Role of Move-spatial and Conceptual Attributes in Children's Categorization

To examine the role of move-spatial and conceptual attributes in children's categorization, older (M=5:10) and younger (M=4:08) kindergarten children were required to solve four classification tasks of animals and vehicles under the "Go together" instruction and then to justify their classifications: the spatial task which could be solved only by using the move-spatial attribute, the conceptual task which could be solved only by using the conceptual attribute, the compatible task which could be solved by using both the spatial and the conceptual attributes, and the incompatible task in which classifying by one (spatial or conceptual) attribute was incompatible with classifying by the other attribute. Classification. (1) Older children performed better than younger children in the four tasks, especially in the spatial and conceptual ones. (2) Performance in the compatible task was about the same as those in the spatial and conceptual tasks. (3) Performance in the incompatible task was somewhat worse than those in the spatial and conceptual tasks. (4) Children tended to attend to the conceptual attribute when the moving spaces of the objects were near each other, whereas they attend to the spatial attribute when the moving spaces were apart from each other. (5) Children's comprehension of moving spaces tended to develop from vehicle to animal categories, Justification. Children's verbal reports to correct classifications were classified into five categones: spatial, functional, and concep-tual, and other justifications, and no reports. (1) Percentages of the subjects who reported the proper justifications (special, functional, and conceptual) were very smaller for younger than for older children. (2) Younger children reported the functional justification mostly for the spatial, conceptual, and compatible tasks, whereas older children reported the spatial, functional, and conceptual justifica-tions. (3) The spatial justification was more dominant than the conceptual one for the vehicle category. (4) When the moving spaced of the objects were apart from each other, the spatial and functional justifications were more dominant than the conceptual one. (5) The findings suggested that the basis of equivalence in children's categorization developed from the functional to the spatial attributes