CHILDRENS FREELISTING OF ANIMAL TERMS - DEVELOPMENTAL-CHANGES IN ACTIVATING CATEGORICAL KNOWLEDGE

121 second graders and 119 fourth graders were asked to enumerate as m any animals as they could within 5 minutes. About half of the second g raders carried out this task again six months later. Data analyses rev ealed the following results: (a) The time course of the increasing num ber of enumerated animals (i.e., the productivity slope) differs only slightly between the grades. Fourth graders, however, produced more an imal terms than second graders, and with regard to the temporal course of children's productivity there was a greater deviation from individ ually calculated exponential or hyperbolic functions among the older c hildren. The productivity among second graders proves to be very stabl e over six months. (b) The probability of producing specific animal te rms increases with age without substantial changes in the rank order o f production frequencies. (c) At both grades comparable tendencies to cluster the animal terms according to typical environmental contexts c an be observed. Among fourth graders the amount of clustering is relat ed to productivity. (d) The use of strong associative interitem relati ons (e.g. lion-tiger) increases with age. The more associative relatio ns are used the more animals are produced within the given time. It is suggested that the results reflect both a quantitative increase of th e knowledge base between ages 8 and 10 and qualitative changes in the activation of information from one's own knowledge base.