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The learning and utilisation of categories is the most elementary and universal form of cognition by which man adjusts to his environment. In order to observe what discriminably different items the Tristans treated ' as if ' equivalent and the strategies employed to render them equivalent a free grouping task was adopted which allowed the subjects to demonstrate their habitual mode of categorising. Groupings were classified by size, grouping strategy and criteria1 attributes. Two sets of observations were made, the first soon after the Tristans arrived in Britain and the second twelve months later. Developmentally, the first attempts at equivalence were made by abstracting the attributes which were sensorily most readily available. With increasing age there was a growing preference for grouping in functional and nominal terms. The transition appears to have been accomplished by the intermediary strategy of uniting a diversity of objects by means of an imaginative narrative. The place and function of thematising in cognitive growth are discussed.

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