To investigate how a child organizes new objects and how categories function for a chid, twelve 6- and twelve 8-year-olds were individually given several sorting tasks involving 21 three-dimensional nonsense objects. The child was exposed to all the objects; three objects were pointed out and withdrawn; and then the child was asked to describe them. The child grouped all 21 objects as he thought they should go together. After grouping, the items were mixed and the child was shown one of the three objects he described earlier. He stated to which group it belonged, and why. Again the object was withdrawn and the child described it and finally he regrouped the objects as they had previously been arranged. Part II of the study was divided into two conditions: (1) the child named five objects, and (2) no names were given. Eight new objects were added to the five and the child was asked to find the original five. The results indicated that (1) the sorting processes of the 8-year-olds were more homogeneous than those of the 6-year-olds, (2) the older children used more groups and recalled sorting better, (3) naming objects improved recall of the objects for 6-year-olds, but did not specifically help the 8-year-olds, and (4) categorization induced the 6-year-olds to notice new aspects of an object but to ignore previously noticed attributes of the objects, while 8-year-olds simply ignored the attributes of the objects. (WD)