FIGURE 12 (S509M): Pseudoconceptual reasoning within an associative complex (a short time after the photograph above was taken)

The photograph in Figure 12 was taken when all of the names of the blocks had been revealed. The five-year-old participant (S509M) came up with a description for each of the groups that had a functional equivalence to that of a conceptual sorting of the blocks: however, his descriptions, concrete and factual as they were, were descriptions of what he noticed that the blocks had in common (after their names had been revealed), and this as opposed the real principle of the combination of height and size (glaringly obvious to adult observers but which escaped this participant completely, at least at this stage).

This participant had begun with a focus on shape which he switched to one of colour when describing the blocks facing him: he maintained that in each group there were two colours that were the same and of the other blocks that each was a different colour from the two that were the same (implying that there were five colours in each group). When asked to provide a little more about the two white mur blocks (bottom left), as there is no white lag block, he said that those two were together because they were of similar shape to each other, therefore justifying their inclusion with the mur group rather than one of them being moved to the lag group. It was very difficult to counter this “pseudo-solution” (Hanfmann and Kasanin’s (1942) term), because it did have a functional logic to it, and an equivalence to a more conceptual approach that was workable in terms of his colour logic, even though the principle of colour changed to shape when it suited the participant.