.5-6 Children Aged Sorting And Reasoning Ability Development Studies

The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental levels, characteristics and gender discrimination in5-6years'old preschool children's seriation abilities and reasoning abilities, and the relationship between these two kinds of abilities. A sample of70children was randomly selected from the top class in a kindergarten in Xi'an(age range:64-70months, the average age:67.2months, standard deviation:3.6). The test to assess children's seriation abilities in this study was developed by Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, and the other tests to examine young children's seriation abilities was adapted from the measures created by kingma and ZhouShuhui.Seriation test includes the order of seriation and the rules of seriation.The order of seriation includes size seriation, number seriation and length seriation. The rules of seriation includes one-dimensional rules and two-dimensional rules which is a total of9tasks.The study examined the statues of preschool children's seriation and reasoning abilities by means of a single test; the effects of age and gender on their performances of seriation and reasoning abilities using data analysis by means of descriptive statistics and independent variance T tests and analysis; the relationship between their seriation and reasoning abilities through Correlation Analysis to Pearson; the mutual development between seriation and reasoning abilities by means of Hierarchical Regression Analysis.The result indicated:(1) Preschool children aged5-6have good order of seriation abilities and a certain level of the rules of seriation abilities. More than80percent of the children can accomplish seriation with10items (by size,number and Iength)successfully. The level of the Children's seriation of one-dimensional rules significantly higher than that of two-dimensional rules. The overall level of the two-dimensional rules ordering is relatively low.(2)Preschool children aged5-6have a certain level of reasoning abilities, but the overall level isn't so high.(3)In overall score and specific score of each task in children's seriation abilities and reasoning abilities,girls did better than boys,but the gender discrimination was not so obvious on the children's performance.(4) The significant positive correlation emerged among children's performance on seriation and performance on reasoning.These two kinds of abilities promote each other.