Abstract
Two experiments on a population of 4 to 6 year olds attending a nursery school furnished the opportunity to study locative categories in relationship to their natural context, i.e., shapes. Experiment I deals with formal categories and shows that representativity is not uniform: Some shapes were selected as typical, whereas others were considered a-typical. Experiment II analyzes the locative categories “in”, “above”, “below” and “between” in relationship to the typical and a-typical shapes defined in Experiment I. The results reveal that localization shows greater typicality (general consensus among the subjects) as the shape itself became typical. Both experiments point to the importance of a joint investigation of categorical structuring and context.