This study used a rating scale, a betting game, and a feedback phase to examine the certainty with which 60 second graders and 36 fifth graders made judgments on tasks involving various forms of conservation and transitivity. (Author/JMB)

Reports three experiments which examined kindergarteners' ability to conserve number in response to three forms of questioning: nonverbal, standard, and control. There was no indication that a full mastery of conservation could be elicited earlier by the nonverbal procedure. (Author/JMB)

Indicates that the evidence in support of an identity-equivalence sequence is much weaker than Brainerd and Hooper claimed. Suggests that for most children, identity and equivalence appear to be contemporaneous developmental achievements. Some general methodological and theoretical issues raised by the identity-equivalence studies are discussed.…

Investigated whether children will relinquish belief in Piagetian concepts upon presentation of disconfirming evidence. The conservation of weight concept extinguished more readily than transitivity of weight, and only for the latter was a developmental trend evident. (DP)

Results of this study involving 120 kindergarten and first-grade boys and girls suggest that some understanding of the invariance of number appears to emerge earlier than the ability to pass the standard verbal test. (BH)

Reports four experiments focusing on Piaget's claims that conservation and transitivity concepts are experienced as logically necessary truths. Two experiments examined feelings of certainty and necessity in college students presented with Piagetian tasks. Two other experiments extended these procedures to children and the issue of developmental…

These results stand in sharp contrast to those previously reported which concluded that most college students will abandon conservation; the present finding is of strong (though less than perfect) resistance. (Authors/CB)

Second grade children were pretested for the ability to conserve, after which conservers were paired with nonconservers. Pairs were then instructed to resolve their opposing answers on the conservation tasks. (JMB)

In order to study possible effects of the degree of perceptual illusion, 64 kindergarten children received tests of quantitative identity and quantitative equivalence for the conservations of number and continuous quantity. (SB)

This is a detailed review of studies of extinction of Piagetian concepts, stressing that interpretation of such research is complicated by methodological problems, some avoidable, some intrinsic to the extinction paradigm; and that this paradigm retains the potential for contributing important information about the nature of concrete-operational…

Contrary to expectation, observable surprise proved infrequent in all groups studied. In contrast, changes in conservation judgment were frequent, although the degree of change was reduced somewhat if an appropriate explanation was required. (Author/CB)

A total of 100 second graders were pretested for conservation of length and weight. Fifty pairs were then formed, each pair consisting of one conserver and one nonconserver. During the second session, the children attempted to resolve their opposed answers on the conservation tasks and on two control questions as well. On both length and weight,…

This study attempted to determine whether children will relinquish their belief in Piagetian concepts upon presentation of disconfirming evidence. Two age groups were tested: third- and fourth-grade and sixth-grade. Conservation of weight and transitivity of weight were the concepts examined; the discrepant feedback consisted of three trials with…