A comparison of children's performance on different linear-ordering tasks

The discrepancy between children's performances on Brown and Murphy's (1975) and Piaget and Inhelder's (1956) studies of ordering tasks was investigated. Twenty-two 4-year-old children were asked to carry out a linear-ordering task that was based on Piaget and Inhelder's (1956) task in which children copied the arrangement of clothes on a clothesline. The type of instructions and the type of layout were varied. There was an effect for the type of layout (p < .01), but the children performed equally well irrespective of the instructions they were given, and overall they were very successful. The results support Brown and Murphy's findings that ability to reproduce a sequence in linear-ordering tasks is developed earlier than previous research has indicated.