Developmental Changes in Understanding of Asymmetric Relations

IR Web Site

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • Developmental Changes in Understanding

Search this article

Abstract

To assess understanding of the asymmetric relation, the subjects were given six questions for living thing and food categories: "Are dogs (or bananas) all animals (or fruits)?", "Are animals (or fruits) all living things (or food)?", and "Are dogs (or bananas) all living things (or food)?" for the inclusion questions, and "Are animals (or fruits) all dogs (or bananas)?", "Are living things (or food) all animals (or fruits)?", and "Are living things (or food) all dogs (bananas)?" for the no-inclusion questions. When the subjects made the positive answer ("Yes") to the inclusion question and the negative answer ("No") to the corresponding no-inclusion question, they were assumed to understand the asymmetric relation. The subjects were judged to reach the weak criterion when they made the asymmetric answer to any one of the three relations. The subjects were judged to reach the strong criterion when they made the asymmetric answers to all relations. Although 3rd-graders and students could understand the asymmetric relation very well for two crireria, 5-yr.-olds were more difficult to understand the relation for the strong than for the weak criteria, which suggest that 5-yr.-olds have capacity to understand the asymmetric relation but their understanding is unstable because of incomplete knowledge about hierarchical relations. Developmental changes in understanding the asymmetric relation were more similar to those of the no-inclusion than to those of the inclusion relations, which suggest that difficulitv to understand the asymmetric relation in young children is due to understand the no-inclusion relation.

Journal

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top