Abstract
4-and5-year old kindergarteners and day nursery children were interviewed about daily life activities, to examine their formation of Generalized Event Representations (GER). All children were asked "What do you usually do in the kindergarten (or the day nursery) from arrival until departure time?" ; kindergarteners were also asked "What have you done today?" or "What do you usually do on Tuesdays?". Children formed GER by describing events in the present tense without reference to the subject. The kindergarteners gave fewer such descriptions than did the day nursery children, probably because they had fewer routine activities. Three possible types of variability in GERS were also examined : (1) episodic memorization of each activity, (2) variability representation as a changing slot of GER, and (3) conditional formation of GER.
