Development of the Ability to Insert into a Series

The development of children's ability to insert an item into a series was investigated. Children ranging in age from 3 to 6 years old were given a seriation construction and insertion task, several different types of insertion tasks, and tasks in which they learned to recognize a series. Children's performance on the seriation construction and insertion task was not influenced by their experience with other tasks, and they were able to solve different types of insertion tasks by 5 years of age. The results thus support Piaget's (1965) and Halford's (1982) predictions of stage-related constraints on children's insertion skills, rather than Bullock's (1985) invariance hypothesis, which claims that experience is a more important influence.