Object Classification by Four Categories of Children in a Development Town in Israel

Abstract

A simple analysis of variance indicated the presence of significant differences in the number of categorizations in an object-sorting task by middle-class, culturally deprived, mentally retarded, and learning-disabled children. T-tests for differences between the means revealed that middle-class children categorized significantly more than culturally deprived children, retarded children, and learning-disabled children. However, culturally deprived children categorized significantly less than retarded children, which is the reverse of the expected performance. It would appear that the teaching methods for culturally deprived children in a development town in Israel are so poor that they cannot even achieve the level of performance of retarded children.