Situation bounded conceptual organization in children: from action to spatial relations

This study performed on children aged 5, 8, and 10 years, deals with conceptual knowledge organization using a word association task. The results show that, at all these ages, the production of thematic relations outnumbers that of taxonomic relations; no thematic-to-taxonomic shift occurs. While children aged 5 years produce more action, temporal, and event relations, older children produce more spatial and property relations. An increased capacity for abstraction allows children aged 8 and 10 years to capture the properties of objects and the spatial layout where objects can be located independently from the specific actions occasionally taking place there. With age, even if events and actions lose their primacy, the perceptual and contextual dimensions of objects play a role in shaping children’s knowledge. The results suggest the opportunity to rethink the relevance of the cognitive economy principle in children’s conceptual organization.