FIGURE 5 (S305F): Pseudoconceptual reasoning within a syncretic representation

When the three-year-old participant (S305F) in Figure 5 was (yet again) asked to find blocks of the same kind as the triangular mur block, she used a similar kind of “logic” to that in Figure 3 above. She lined up all the “onange” blocks because they were the same, but would not include the cev trapezoid (slightly hidden, middle) because it was “not the same”. For her, the concept “onange” could not include the orange cev trapezoid possibly because the characteristic “onange” had receded due to a lack of hierarchical representation and was replaced by size because the cev trapezoid is much smaller than the other orange blocks. The participant’s unstable approach to “onange” was all the more surprising given the prominence of colours and shapes in the preschool programme.