Abstract
WHETHER or not the young child can make transitive inferences (A>B, B>C ∴ A>C) is still a controversial issue. Bryant and Trabasso1 have claimed that he can, provided that he remembers the necessary information, but this claim has been disputed2,3. Youniss and Furth's main argument is that it is one thing to show that a child can make inferences, but quite another to demonstrate that he puts these inferences to any effect. They cite the measurement experiment of Piaget et al.4 as evidence that the child does not make inferences spontaneously to solve problems. Here children had been shown a tower of bricks on a table and asked to build one as big on the floor. A stick the same height as the first tower was available: the question was whether the child would use this as a measure to equate the towers, thus making an inference (A=B, B=C ∴ A=C). Children below 8-yr old did not measure with the stick, and it was concluded that they had no idea of measurement. We here report experiments which lead to the opposite conclusion.
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Bryant, P. E., and Trabasso, T., Nature, 232, 456–458 (1971).
de Boysson Bardies, B., and O'Regan, K., Nature, 246, 531–534 (1973).
Youniss, O., and Furth, H. G., Nature, 244, 314–315 (1973).
Piaget, J., Inhelder, B., and Szeminska, A., The Child's Conception of Geometry (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1960).
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BRYANT, P., KOPYTYNSKA, H. Spontaneous measurement by young children. Nature 260, 773 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/260773a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/260773a0
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