Developmental and individual differences in children's area judgment rules

Abstract

Children at three grade levels (kindergarten, second, and fourth) rated the areas of three types of stimuli (rectangles, triangles, and ellipses). Functional measurement methodology was applied to each subject's ratings in order to assess several one- and two-dimentional rules. At each grade level a large majority of subjects produced judgments that were consistent with one of the rules. Among the kindergartners no single rule predominated: the height + width rule, together with various one-dimensional rules, accounted for most of the classifiable response patterns. Among the second graders the height + width rule predominated. Among the fourth graders the height + width rule and the height × width rule, in almost equal proportions, accounted for most of the classifiable response patterns. These results contradict Piaget's claim that young children are limited to one-dimensional judgments, as well as N. H. Anderson and D. O. Cuneo's (1978, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 107, 335–378) hypothesis that young children judge quantity according to a general-purpose additive integration rule.