ABSTRACT
Children perform two actions that are notably different in content: In one case, they rotate a band of cardboard, inverting the order of the colors that mark one of its edges; in the other, they rotate and translate a set square so as to slide it through doorways in the walls of a box with three compartments. Because of the difference in content, abstraction of the role of the rotation is not immediate when children are asked to compare the two actions, and it is interesting to follow the developmental steps that this abstraction goes through. In the first method the experimenter asks the child to draw them, then asks for a predictive drawing showing the same colors after the rectangle is pivoted 180°. The experimenter puts in front of the child a wooden enclosure, 52.5 cm long and 36.5 cm wide, consisting of three corridors.
