Object Categorization in the Preschool Years and Its Relation with Cognitive Inhibition

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between flexible categorization and cognitive inhibition in preschool children. Subjects (N=14) were aged between 3 and 4 1⁄2 years. They were tested with two tasks: a Stroop-like day-night task for inhibition (Gerstadt, Hong & Diamond, 1994) and an object-sorting task for flexible categorization. As 6 children did not perform the inhibition task properly, it was impossible to measure any correlation. In consequence, the study presents the analysis of the individual performance of the 8 children that performed both tasks. Discussion regards the implications of investigating the interplay between external and internal factors for understanding the mechanisms and the development of categorization.