While the separation-individuation process (Mahler, 1966; Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, 1975) essentially describes the cognitive-affective achievement of mental representations of a separate self and object, little is known of the cognitive functioning of children in relation to that process. Our ignorance about this relationship is curious, since certain descriptive aspects of cognitive style (Witkin et al., 1962) and cognitive control (Gardner et al., 1959) to a considerable degree overlap characterizations of the separation-individuation process. The observational study to be reported here, a study of 23 children attending a normal nursery school, sheds some light on this issue. The investigation was focused on two