Children's Categorization with Varying Adult Support

Abstract

Two studies investigated children’s involvement in shared thinking with varying adult support and children’s later performance on the categorization task. In the two studies, an adult followed one of several scripts that systematically varied the provision of adult support and the involvement requested of the children, middle-class U.S. 5-year-olds. Children who received minimal support for determining the categorization system categorized fewer items correctly, when later asked to sort some of the same and some new items, than children with whom the adult had articulated the categorization system or children whom the adult had induced to determine the categorization system. If the adult provided little assistance in determining the categorization system, children requested greater assistance from the adult. There were no differences in children’s later performance among the scripts which varied whether the adult or the child was responsible for articulating the category system, suggesting that, as long as there was adult support and child involvement in following the thinking, the particular balance of responsibility for making decisions did not matter.

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