The development of rulebound strategies for manipulating seriated cups: A parallel between action and grammar

Systematic observation of American children from 11 to 36 months of age playing with seriated nesting cups established the existence of a developmental sequence of rulebound or consistent strategies for combining the cups. The three action strategies seem formally homologous to certain grammatical constructions, and the manipulative strategies are acquired in the same developmental order as the corresponding grammatical structures. These strategies might therefore constitute a manifestation of some underlying structural capacities critical for language acquisition. The development of seriation described by Piaget for children from 4 to 8 years of age working with other materials was replicated in this much younger age range using nesting cups. These stages in the growth of a concept of ordinal quantity turn out to be empirically and theoretically related to the rulebound strategies upon which the study focused.