Investigation of 3-to 6-year-old children?s categorization, cross-classification and inference abilities

Abilities of categorization, cross-classification and inference are very important to recognize and make sense of our environment. This research was conducted in order to examine the development of these skills in three?six year-old children.The study was conducted on 100 children of three?six year-old attending a kindergarten of a university in Adana in spring term of 2008?2009 academic year. For sample selection, initially Denver Developmental Screening Test was applied to all the children (total 268) attending that kindergarten. 100 children in sample group were selected from normally developing children. Participant children selected by with proportional random sampling method by utilising random numbers and in each age group there were 25 children. In this study, as a data collecting tools, nonconlifct, conflict, cros-classification and inference triads were used.At the end of the study, although most of the children?s taxonomic, script and evaluative skills were above the chance level, it was found out that they were still in the process of acquiring these skills. Moreover, while making taxonomic, script and evaluative categorization, the three year-olds mostly based on non-categorical relationships whereas four, five, six year-olds mostly based on categorical properties. It was determined that considering non-categorical qualities had an important role in children?s categorization errors. Although in cross-classification and inductive inference most of the children, in inductive selectivity some of the children were above the chance level, it was found out that they were still in the process of acquiring these skills. It was determined that a significant increase was occurred with the age while acquiring all those skills.