Children's understanding of negation
Date
1973
Authors
Tayler, June
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Abstract
Children's concepts of negation were first investigated by Inhelder and Piaget (1964) and their research provided evidence that the operation of negation is related to classification in general. Two hypotheses which have evolved from children's performance of classificatory tasks have been examined in this study.
Inhelder and Piaget (1964) hypothesised that class inclusion relations, come prior to, and are a necessary prerequisite for the handling of negation as a logical operation. A series of studies by Feldman (1972), designed to test the assumption made by Inhelder and Piaget that negation and class inclusion are related phenomena and to specify the relationship between them, provided data that suggested that competence at class inclusion tasks developed later than an understanding of the simple negation concepts used in her experiments.
An attempt to establish the results of Feldman, with respect to the logical operation of negation, was undertaken. The present study also attempted to extend the data concerning the understanding of null classes and empty sets. Inhelder and Piaget (1964) had observed that this notion was incompatible with the child's idea of collection and their results indicated that the null set was rejected throughout the stage of concrete operations.
The sample consisted of 120 children; 20 of each sex from each of grades 1, 2 and J, The four tests consisted of a test of class inclusion, a partial replica of Feldman's negation test, Diamond's test on double negatives and the null set, and a test of incomplete sets.
The principal findings of this study, as they relate to the preliminary aims of the research were that
1. There was little support for Inhelder and Piaget's (1964) claim that negation and class inclusion were strongly related.
2. There was support for Feldman's (1972) thesis that an understanding of the notion of negation develops earlier than the emergence of class inclusion in children's reasoning. This was so when the test of negation was other than that used by Feldman in her study.
3. There was support for the thesis that class inclusion develops later than most other concrete operational skills.
4. There was no support for the thesis that comprehension of the null set or empty class is delayed until the stage of formal operational thinking.
5. There appeared to be a relationship between the understanding of the null class or empty set and the understanding of the incomplete set. There also appeared to be a relationship between the understanding of the null set and the ability to deal with double negatives, Thus in future research it seems necessary to test the existence of these suggested relationships and to establish whether any rank order exists.