Coordination of size standards by young children

"Big" and "little" are inherently relational terms: whether an object is considered big or little changes as the standard of comparison changes. The present studies examined how 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children use and coordinate 2 different kinds of standards: perceptual (object is compared to another physically present object) and normative (object is compared to a class standard stored in memory). Even the youngest children were capable of using both normative and perceptual standards. When children avoided a perceptual interpretation it was because they chose a conflicting normative interpretation instead. Thus, very young children can apply different standards of comparison when judging size.