The relationship between classification and questioning strategies among adults.

Adults ranging from 30 to 90 were administered the Twenty Questions Task to evaluate questioning strategies and the Picture Pairing Test to assess classification preferences. With respect to the Twenty Questions Task, the results indicated that the percentage of constraint-seeking questions decreased while the percentage of hypothesis-testing questions increased across age. With respect to classification, the results indicated that the use of similarity-based classifications decreased while the use of complementary-based classification increased across age. Further, there was significant relationship between questioning strategy and classification preference. Individuals who asked constraint-seeking questions tended to use similarity-based classifications and those who asked hypothesis-testing questions tended to use complementary-based classifications.