Relational behavior by school children: A longitudinal study

Abstract

Changes in the tendency of children to describe and elaborate ten different kinas of realtions were explored in a two-year period. Thirty-five children solved a task of identifying relations and then, answered to questions made in interviews on three different moments. The results indicated: a) the tendency to describe and elaborate relations improved mainly during the second school grade, b) improvements fouded in mainly exercises that contained apparent and non-apparent properties, c) progress occurred mainly in descriptions of the difference, sequence, and opposition relations, and finally, d) performance of children who scored relatively high in the beginning did not show improvement.  These results are compared with other studies and futures investigations are suggested.