Brief Report: The Older of Two Trees: Young Children’s Development of Operational Time

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.