The Development of Concept Formation in Children

Abstract

The Development of Concept Formation in Children SUZANNE REICHARD, MARION SCHNEIDER, and DAVID RAPAPORT The Menninger Clinic, Topeka Aside from the work of Piaget (2) there has been little attempt to study the development of concept formation in children. The need for a developmental study which would provide a tentative set of norms for the evaluation of clinical material prompted the undertaking of the present research. We used two tests of concept formation, the Color-Form Test and the Sorting Test first described by Weigl (4), and later by Goldstein and Sheerer (1). Inasmuch as these tests were originally designed for work with brain-injured patients, we in our clinical work with various neurotics, psychotics, and cases of behavior disorders, found that many new types of reaction to these tests became apparent. The only previous developmental study of these tests is that of Jane Thompson (3), which, however, pursued less specific aims. The subjects employed in the present study were two hundred thirty-four white children ranging in age from four to fourteen years, inclusive. The four-year-olds were drawn from a nursery school, the remainder from the Topeka public school system.1 Only children who were normally placed in their grades were tested. The Color Form Test consists of twelve pieces of cardboard of four different colors and three shapes. The subject first is asked to together those that belong After he has made his first sorting either on the basis of form or of color, he is asked to them together in another way, a different way. Success is marked by the ability to shift from one category to the other; failure by repetition of the first category, or by the construction of patterns or mixed groupings. Scoring accordingly distinguishes between subjects who are able to make two, one, or no groupings. The Sorting Test consists of thirty-three objects which may be grouped according to use, color, form,' material, or existence of pairs. In the first part of the test, the subject is handed seven objects, one at a time, and told to put with each all that belong with it. After he has completed his grouping, he is asked to tell why they belong together. The second part of the test consists of the presentation by the examiner of twelve groupings which the subject is asked to define. In scoring this test, sorting behavior was scored plus, plusminus, minus-plus, minus, according to the accuracy of sorting, and loose or narrow according to whether the subject included more or fewer objects in his sorting than the concept in question required. Loose groupings are characteristic of schizophrenics who tend, for example, to put with a ball any object that contains a rounded portion, while narrow groupings are found in deipressives who have difficulty in finding any object to go with the sample object presented. In addition, the subject's definitions were scored according to the level of conceptualization manifested, where concretistic, funtional, or conceptual. Aside from the concretistic, a number of other types of inadequate