Class Inclusion Task Research Articles

Class inclusion versus quantifiers comprehension tasks: an experimental study with school-aged children.

Literature in developmental psychology pays special attention to the difficulties met by preschool children when confronted with (universal vs. existential) quantified sentences. According to the pivotal Piagetian view, the difficulties exhibited in quantifier comprehension during the preoperational period (age 2-6) derive from the same limitations in logical reasoning that cause bad performance outcomes in class inclusion problems. Nevertheless, as far as we know, a direct comparison between the two tasks has never been produced. In this research we tested the logical hypotheses concerning the failure in quantifier comprehension of preschool children by administering a sentence-picture matching task to two groups of children (5-6 vs. 7-8years old). Pictures, obtained by partially pairing two entity sets, one of which outnumbers the other, were presented to participants. After each picture, children were asked to answer questions involving quantified versus class inclusion contents. Main findings showed that younger children performed the quantifier task worse than older children and their performance in that task was also worse with respect to the class inclusion task. This difference was not observed with older children who obtained better results than younger children in both tasks. These findings suggest that the specific abilities involved in solving the two problems evolve independently from each other during cognitive development. The results have been discussed in the light of the recent developmental theories.

Improving Children’s Logical and Mathematical Performance via a Pragmatic Approach

Deductive and logical reasoning is a crucial topic for cognitive psychology and has largely been investigated in adults, concluding that humans are apparently irrational. Yet, from a pragmatic approach, the logical level of meaning is only one of possible communicative interpretations, and the least likely to be assigned if the intent of the task is not adequately transmitted. Indeed, new formulations of the mathematical tasks (syllogisms, selection task, class inclusion task, prolem solving), of greater relevance to the problem and to its aim, greatly improved adults’ logical performance. The current study tested whether pragmatic manipulations of task instructions influenced in a similar way children’s performance in deductive and logical tasks (Experiment 1) and in insight problems (Experiment 2). We found that, when task instructions were in accordance with the conversational rules of communication, 10-year-old children substantially improved their performance. We suggest that language use imposes constraints in terms of informativeness and relevance which are crucial in teaching logic and mathematics.

Training class inclusion responding in typically developing children and individuals with autism.

In a class inclusion task, a child must respond to stimuli as being involved in two different though hierarchically related categories. This study used a Relational Frame Theory (RFT) paradigm to assess and train this ability in three typically developing preschoolers and three individuals with autism spectrum disorder, all of whom had failed class inclusion tests. For all subjects, relational training successfully established the target repertoire and subsequent testing demonstrated both maintenance and generalization. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

The class inclusion question: a case study in applying pragmatics to the experimental study of cognition.

For more than 70 years, Piaget’s class-inclusion task (given, e.g., five asters and three tulips, the child is asked whether “there are more asters or more flowers”) has been the object of experimental investigation. Inclusion is of considerable importance for cognitive science as it is a key concept for logical operations and knowledge representation. It is shown that the question can be characterised by a kind of privative ambiguity which is at the source of the younger children’s answer, “more asters”. A relevance-theoretic explanation of children’s interpretation of the question and of the subsequent responses is expounded. This account can explain the effect of all the factors that are known to influence performance (e.g., role of collections, counting, typicality, qualification, syntax, etc.), a review of which is presented. It is further tested experimentally. The development of performance is explained on the basis of the way children disambiguate the question. This study exemplifies the two ways in which pragmatic analysis is pertinent to the study of children’s (as well as adults’) reasoning and judgement, namely in explaining and predicting participants’ comprehension of the statements and questions, and in taking into account attribution processes that occur in the experimental setting.

Inhibitory control efficiency in a Piaget-like class-inclusion task in school-age children and adults: A developmental negative priming study.

Most children under 7 years of age presented with 10 daisies and 2 roses fail to indicate that there are more flowers than daisies. Instead of the appropriate comparison of the relative numerosities of the superordinate class (flowers) to its subordinate class (daisies), they perform a direct perceptual comparison of the extensions of the 2 subordinate classes (daisies vs. roses). In our experiment, we investigated whether increasing efficiency in solving the Piagetian class-inclusion task is related to increasing efficiency in the ability to resist (inhibit) this direct comparison of the subordinate classes' extensions. Ten-year-old and young adult participants performed a computerized priming version of a Piaget-like class-inclusion task. The experimental design was such that the misleading perceptual strategy to inhibit on the prime (in which a superordinate class had to be compared with a subordinate class) became a congruent strategy to activate on the probe (in which the two subordinate classes' extensions were directly compared). We found a negative priming effect of 291 ms in children and 129 ms in adults. These results provide evidence for the first time (a) that adults still need to inhibit the comparison of the subordinate classes' extensions in class-inclusion tasks and (b) that the ability to inhibit this heuristic increases with age (resulting in a lower executive cost). Taken together, these findings provide additional support for the neo-Piagetian approach of cognitive development that suggests that the acquisition of increasingly complex knowledge is based on the ability to resist (inhibit) heuristics and previously acquired knowledge.

An Application of Configural Frequency Analysis

Development of class reasoning was investigated using configural frequency analysis (CFA). We administered class inclusion, vicariant inclusion, and law of duality tasks to a sample of 540 Chinese second through fifth graders. In each task, children were asked to compare two classes and make a choice from four alternative answers while the number of classes was not given. Results showed that (1) children’s performance on both class inclusion and vicariant inclusion tasks improved significantly from Grade 2 to Grade 3 and from Grade 3 to Grade 4, but children did not tend to give correct answers to class inclusion items until Grade 4 and to vicariant inclusion items until Grade 5; (2) children from Grades 2 to 5 performed poorly on the law of duality task, but fifth graders were more likely to respond correctly than the general population; and (3) second graders tended to give wrong answers such as “equal number” and “not sure.” A discussion of the development of class reasoning followed.

Inhibitory control in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks: A neo-Piagetian inter-task priming study

We investigated whether success in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks relies on a general ability to inhibit misleading strategies. Two groups of 10-year-olds performed inter-task priming between computerized versions of class-inclusion and number-conservation tasks (Experiment 1). In one group, the class-inclusion task served as a prime and the number-conservation task as an assessment probe and vice versa in the other group. Response times were shorter in the number-conservation task when performed after the class-inclusion task (and vice versa in the other group) than in control prime-probe sequences in which the primes did not require the inhibition of a misleading strategy. Experiment 2 showed that these inter-task priming effects did not simply reflect that class inclusion and number conservation rely on the reversibility of concrete operations as Piaget would have hypothesized. Taken together the results are consistent with the neo-Piagetian assumption that cognitive development is rooted in both the acquisition of knowledge of incremental complexity and the ability to resist (inhibit) previous knowledge. Critically, the present finding suggests that the inhibitory ability is not domain- or strategy-specific.

Missed opportunities on Webkinz when developmental abilities are not considered

Webkinz World is a popular virtual world for elementary school-aged children, attracting millions of unique visitors per month. Despite its popularity, research has yet to explore how Webkinz World connects to children's emerging abilities or influences their cognitive and social development. Using in-depth observation and content analysis, this study examined the activities and educational affordances of the site using a developmental perspective. Results show that while Webkinz World has the potential to support learning, many of the activities require sophisticated cognitive and social skills with which children often struggle. Specifically, we focus on how class-inclusion tasks and the use of multiple perspectives are embedded throughout Webkinz World without offering feedback, scaffolding, or guidance to support children's skills in these domains. While this popular site is a self-proclaimed “educational tool,” this study found that many educational opportunities were missed from the failure to consider developmental abilities of the target-aged users.

Inhibition and language pragmatic view in redundant data problem solving

The present study concerns redundant data problems, defined as problems in which irrelevant data is provided. This type of problem provides a misleading context [Pascual-Leone, J. (1987). Organismic process for neo-Piagetian theories: A dialectical causal account of cognitive development. International Journal of Psychology, 22, 531–570] similar to the Piagetian class inclusion task. The two experiments performed showed that adding the a-pragmatic cue ‘in total’ to the final question of redundant data problems increased both 7- and 9-year-old children's failure rate, without modifying the structure of the problem. This indicates that a non-structural linguistic cue can bias children towards failure by enhancing the lack of inhibition of the ordinary adding schema.

The Effects of a “Family” Analogy on Class Inclusion Reasoning by Young Children

This paper investigates the role of analogies in logical reasoning as an important aspect of scientific thinking. In particular, we studied the role of analogical reasoning in the solution of Piagetian concrete operational tasks. Halford (1993) has suggested that 4- to 5-year olds should be able to solve Piagetian class inclusion tasks on the basis of analogies to the relational structure of the nuclear family. This idea was tested in two studies. Analogy effects on class inclusion reasoning were indeed found. These effects were strengthened by the provision of hints to use an analogy and by deeper initial processing of the relational structure of the analogy. The family analogy was applied equally to sets of natural kinds and artifacts. These results suggest that children use familiar relational structures as a basis for logical reasoning. It seems likely that analogies will be core to scientific reasoning as well.

Respective contributions of inhibition and knowledge levels in class inclusion development: a negative priming study

AbstractDempster (Dempster, 1995; Dempster & Corkill, 1999) proposed that developmental changes in performance on Piagetian tasks could be related to changes in inhibitory efficiency more than to logical development. In this study, the negative priming paradigm was adapted to the class inclusion task in order to investigate the role of inhibition and knowledge levels in the development of class inclusion. Participants were pre‐tested on two inclusion tasks, the standard Piagetian task and Markman's modification task, and assigned to different knowledge levels: empirical, and logical necessity. Children were then tested on a priming version of the class inclusion task. Results showed a negative priming effect, indicating that the irrelevant ‘subclass comparison strategy’ was actively inhibited during the processing of the class inclusion task. This effect was found to vary as a function of knowledge levels, indicating that the need for inhibition was reduced when children had attained logical necessity.

Cognitive Structure, Content Knowledge, and Classificatory Reasoning

Classificatory reasoning was studied in 58 children, 7 and 8 years old, who differed in operational level as well as in expertise. Knowledge about dinosaurs was used to distinguish expertise level. The children's performance on class-inclusion tasks involving the dinosaur content was a function of operational level. An overall effect of expertise was found for children's performance on class-membership measures. Furthermore, on the class-membership measures, expertise did not significantly influence the performance of children at the concrete-operational level, but it did for children at the pre-operational level. The results suggest that domain-specific knowledge and operational level may have different but interacting influences on children's classificatory reasoning.

The Training of Class Inclusion and English Language Skills in Young Latino Children

Using a multiple baseline design, four 6-year-old Latino school children were trained on class inclusion and English language skills over approximately five months. Class inclusion tasks consisted of standard Piagetian two-subclass items as well as new and more challenging three- and four-subclass tasks pertaining to two superordinate categories. Counting, feedback and various verbal reinforcers were used as part of the class inclusion training. English language skills training served as an alternative form of instruction that was of benefit in its own right and also made a variant of the multiple baseline approach possible. Post-intervention gains on the two domains were significant and proved stable over at least four-and-a-half months.

Competency criteria and the class inclusion task: modeling judgements and justifications.

Competency criteria and the class inclusion task: modeling judgements and justifications.

Competency criteria and the class inclusion task: modeling judgments and justifications.

Preschool age children's class inclusion task responses were modeled as mixtures of different probability distributions. The main idea: Different response strategies are equivalent to different probability distributions. A child displays cognitive strategy s if P (child uses strategy s, given the child's observed score X = x) = p(s) is the most probable strategy. The general approach is widely applicable to many settings. Both judgment and justification questions were asked. Judgment response strategies identified were subclass comparison, guessing, and inclusion logic. Children's justifications lagged their judgments in development. Although justification responses may be useful, C. J. Brainerd was largely correct: If a single response variable is to be selected, a judgments variable is likely the preferable one. But the process must be modeled to identify cognitive strategies, as B. Hodkin has demonstrated.

Reasoning from Memory: A Lifespan Inquiry into the Necessity of Remembering When Reasoning about Class Inclusion

In the current experiment, we evaluated the relationship between reasoning and remembering across the lifespan (10-, 13-, 15-, 23-, and 67-year-olds) using color and number class-inclusion tasks. Subjects made judgments when memory load or information load was either high or low. Reading latency, choice latency, and choice accuracy data were collected and analyzed using formal models that partitioned memory and reasoning as well as type of reasoning strategy. The results showed that: (1) study skills, as indexed by reading latency, were sophisticated across the lifespan; (2) the difference between color and number choice latencies increased with age; (3) reasonably consistent effects were obtained as a function of increasing memory load, with the quality of both reasoning and remembering being adversely affected; (4) different effects were obtained at each age as a function of increasing information load; and (5) the major developmental trend across the lifespan was a tradeoff between class-inclusion and subclass-subclass forms of reasoning. A number of extant theoretical approaches were discussed, none of which were able to account for variations in class-inclusion performance across the lifespan. What was clear, however, was that memory-reasoning dependencies must be incorporated into any comprehensive theory of cognitive development across the lifespan.

Antecedents of Children's Performance on Class Inclusion Tasks: Some Zimbabwean Evidence

An analysis of covariance hierarchical regression procedure was used to examine children's performance on verbally presented classification tasks in relation to the children's socio‐cultural background, age, level of schooling, and sex. Task perception and motivation were entered as covariates. A total of 296 black and white Zimbabwean children took part in the study. Social class membership, age, level of schooling, and sex explained a significant proportion of the variance in performance on the classification tasks, whereas cultural group membership did not. Implications for multicultural perspectives on children's cognitive development are discussed and suggestions made for further research.

Part-Whole Knowledge and Early Arithmetic Problem Solving

In two experiments, we examined the development of 4- to 6-year-old children's understanding of part-whole relations. The first experiment tested the hypothesis that young children do not appreciate the part-whole structure of arithmetic problems, focusing on initial-unknown change problems. Five- and 6-year-olds showed a sensitivity to the part-whole structure of those problems in that they responded with a number that was larger than that given for the final set more often on addition than on subtraction problems, and they responded with a smaller number than that given for the final set more often on subtraction than on addition problems. In contrast, 4-year-olds tended to choose a small number on both addition and subtraction problems, and their responses were not consistent with the part-whole structure of the problems to a reliable degree. The second experiment further examined young children's appreciation of part-whole relations, using a class inclusion task. Again on these problems, 5- and 6-year...

Children's interpretive strategies for class inclusion tasks

The study examined children's interpretive strategies for verbally presented class inclusion tasks as related to socio‐cultural background, age and level of schooling. A total of 298 black and white Zimbabwe primary school children took part in the study. Children's performance was considered both qualitatively and quantitatively. Significant social class related differences in children's skill orientation were found. However, no socio‐culturally related differences in children's use of interpretive strategies obtained, although age and level of schooling accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in performance. Implications for psychoeducational practice as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.

Class inclusion and working memory

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the general issue of the relationship between memory and reasoning and the specific issue of subskills used in answering class-inclusion questions. Semantic skills of first-grade children were investigated in the Pilot Experiment. In Experiment 1, an attempt was made to determine if fourth graders, seventh graders, and college students mimicked the first graders tendency to appropriately encode the superordinate class, but answer class-inclusion questions as though only subclass comparisons were required. A mathematical model and a computer-based methodology were developed for this purpose. Unlike previous research, in Experiment 1 fourth and seventh graders showed no understanding of class-inclusion logic. Because of the additional memory demands imposed by the questions used in Experiment 1, a third experiment was conducted to evaluate if memory load determined the quality of class-inclusion reasoning. The results obtained across the three experiments were interpreted as reflecting the need for a new conceptualization of the class-inclusion task. Performance seems to be dependent on subjects' abilities to integrate relevant subskills, rather than on deficient reasoning or missing subskills, consistent with a resource-limited, willed-attention, working-memory model.