Abstract

The present study was attempted to investigate immanent thinking in Korean children within the framework of Piaget's concepts. Piaget conceives of immanent thinking as punishment which is looked upon by the young child as resulting from nature or thing itself. Previous investigators have suggested that immanent thinking in children was affected by several factors such as cultural milieu, chronological age, mental age, sex difference and test situations. The present experiment was carried out for the purpose of inquiring these factors. The method adopted in this study was questionnaire technique composed of items of which items were borrowed from Piaget and the other 17 items were constructed through two preliminary experiments. 2187 children whose ages were 6 to 11 years in elementary schools were used as subjects. The responses obtained were divided into three categories of immanent, mixed and naturalristic responses. Several facts were observed as follows: (1) Immanent thinking was significantly decreased with age. This finding confirmed with the data of Piaget and others. (2) Our data failed to find out any relationship between immanent thinking and the levels of intelligence, in contrast with those of Piaget and Abel. (3) Differences of immanent thinking between the Korean children and the Hopi and Lebanese children might be attributable to the cultural milieu. (4) Imminent thinking in boys was significantly lowered than that of girls. It is in agreement with previous investigations. (5) When considered the high correlation between the two situations of test and interview, the test method is much likely to be placed instead of the method of interview.