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Does the relative nature of size affect the way children sort objects ? We asked 96 children from 4 age groups (6, 7, 9, 11) to sort in 5, 2 or 3 classes a number of buttons differing only in that they were of five different sizes. The results show a clear ontogenetical evolution of the ability to achieve the requested arrangements and to anticipate other possible arrangements. However, the first arrangements made by the younger children were, paradoxically enough, dichotomies and trichotomies in which what was identical and what was different was assessed in terms of degree. The examination focuses on the organizing role of language and of perception for the younger children and on their very subtle conceptual evolution which testifies to their gradual mastery of size properties. The developmental trend in classification does not appear to be a holistic-to-analytic shift ; instead, it is a trend toward levels of conceptualization (the properties of objects are abstracted at different levels).
