Effects of Conceptual Ability and Frequency of Instances on Learning the Conceptual Sorting Task in Kindergarten Children

Kindergarten children were given a conceptual ability test which required them to verbalize the concept names common to the two instances, and then the Ss with high-and low-conceptual ability were given the conceptual sorting task consisting of the instances of high or low frequency. The results showed that the. sorting task was learned faster when the Ss with high ability were given the task with high-frequency instances than when the Ss with low ability learned the task with low-frequency instances. The findings were interpreted to show that the concept utilization in learning the sorting task is interactively influenced both by S's conceptual ability relevant to the task and the frequency of instances used in the task