January 2010, Vol. 41, Issue 1
Brief Report: The Older of Two Trees: Young Children’s Development of Operational Time
Constance Kamii and Kelly A. Russell
Piaget (1971) made a distinction between
intuitive (preoperational) time and operational (logico-mathematical) time. When
time is still intuitive, children base their judgments of age on what is
observable (e.g., people’s height). With the aid of 11 pictures of an apple
tree and a pear tree taken on 6 consecutive birthdays, 184 children in grades
K–5 were individually asked, at a specific time, if two trees were the same age
or if one was older than the other.
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