Seriation in young children

Huggett, Stephen Anthony (1980) Seriation in young children. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

Huggett, S.A. Piaget (1952) maintains that the ability to seriate rods systematically does not develop until the age of seven or eight years. However, children as young as three are able to seriate by stacking blocks in a tower or by nesting cups. The aim of this thesis is to study the psychological processes which make nesting and stacking easier than linear seriation. Six experiments were performed to investigate task differences between stacking, nesting and linear seriation. In each study the type and number of elements to be seriated were controlled so that these factors could not contribute to differences between the tasks. The major findings were: (i) linear seriation was more difficult than nesting and stacking even when the same materials were used; (ii) differences in the visual array in stacking or nesting did not explain why these tasks were easier than the linear task; (iii) the most plausible explanation may concern 'enactive' processes. Tasks such as stacking and nesting impose a unidirectional mode of completion on the seriation which makes them more simple to perform. A linear task does not impose the same constraints on the child's activity. The results are discussed in the light of Piaget's concepts of reversibility and decalage. These are found to be unhelpful in describing the psychological development of seriation skills. It is suggested that the concept of unidirectionality may be useful when applied to specific problem solving sequences.

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