An Application of Configural Frequency Analysis
The Development of Children’s Class Reasoning
Abstract
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.
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