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Categorization Skills in Children: The Relationship between Maternal Strategy Use and Children Strategy Use

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2018, Master of Arts, Miami University, Psychology.
Objects and events allow interactions between mothers and children depending on the level of child development. To date, little research has examined the importance of the maternal impact and contributions that facilitate children’s categorization skills. Using a Vygotskian theoretical framework, the current study investigated to assess maternal and preschool strategy use employed during categorization, and to examine which strategies would be associated with preschooler categorization strategy use. Many studies of categorization in children have revealed that children often prefer to use types of categorization preference (i.e., taxonomic and thematic) according to directions they receive from their mothers. The present study aims to expand the existing literature on the contribution of mothers’ categorization strategies to children’s categorization skills by exploring parent-child interactions. In this study, parent-child interactions, maternal contributions, and children preferences on categorizations were examined. Mother-child dyads from preschools (n= 29) in a small Midwestern college town completed a game that involves videotapes recording. Codes of the mother-child interactions were analyzed by using frequency analyses to extract empirical estimates. The results of the present study confirm that mothers strategy use depends on the categorical relations (i.e., taxonomic or thematic). For example, when sorting the cards, mothers used perceptual cues when categorizing the object taxonomically. In contrast, they used functional cues when grouping the cards thematically. These strategies were differentially associated with the preschooler strategy use. Implications, future directions and expansions of theoretical perspectives of the research on the role of social interaction on preschool categorization skills are discussed.
Yvette Harris (Advisor)
45 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Inan, S. (2018). Categorization Skills in Children: The Relationship between Maternal Strategy Use and Children Strategy Use [Master's thesis, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1532608485832591

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Inan, Seyma. Categorization Skills in Children: The Relationship between Maternal Strategy Use and Children Strategy Use . 2018. Miami University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1532608485832591.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Inan, Seyma. "Categorization Skills in Children: The Relationship between Maternal Strategy Use and Children Strategy Use ." Master's thesis, Miami University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1532608485832591

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)