Preschool Children's Performance with Perceptual and Conceptual Recognition Criteria

Abstract

In two picture recognition experiments preschool children were required to make three different recognition decisions to a single study picture. In both experiments one of the three tests was based on perceptual identity (level 1), one on common objectclass (level 2), and the third on either taxonomic category or complementary pair formation (level 3). In experiment 1 it was found that the preschool children (X age = 4-10) could make both level 3 recognition decisions with equal ease and at 90% accuracy although there was a significant decline in performance as level of abstraction increased. In experiment 2, three-, four-, and five-year-olds' recognition accuracy improved with age and decreased as level of abstraction increased. Category decisions were associated with lower accuracy levels than those based on complementary pairs. For the category pairs, inferior choice explanations lagged well behind accuracy and improved with age in contrast with the acceptable explanations given by all age groups for the complementary pair solutions. Commonalities in the children's perceptions of the two level 3 grouping principles were discussed, as was the possible confounding of the comparison of the two organizational principles by differential picture pair difficulty.