Discusses students' understanding of the qualitative conservation of matter and how this understanding is influenced by previous instruction in chemistry and task variables. Results show the influence of group membership, task content, and problem context on students' performance. (ZWH)

Discusses a series of experiments to establish a significance of temperature difference in rates of cooling, to illustrate the connection between energy transfer and the consequent temperature changes for thermally connected systems that are not in equilibrium. (MKR)

Applies the concepts of kinematics and conservation of mechanical energy to calculate the time needed to reach a certain point along semicircular and parabolic paths. Presents numerical calculations for the critical speed thresholds for the paths of semicircular and parabolic curves. (JRH)

Explores how the apparent loss of energy in inelastic collisions may be understood by considering a simple model of two rigid balls connected by a spring. Includes a numerical simulation of this and an extension to include Newton's Cradle. (DDR)

Three studies demonstrated that adults and children provide nonconservation-of-weight responses to misdirecting questions. Findings underscore the importance of linguistic pragmatics, conflict with recent claims that adults believe in the necessity of certain types of Piagetian logic, and support earlier findings suggesting that contextual cues…

Seventy mentally retarded students, successfully taught to conserve number and substance in the Piagetian sense, resisted attempts at extinction but were unable to generalize to other conservation tasks. (Author)

Although the idea that conservation can occur without compensation was rejected by Piaget, direct and indirect evidence from developmental studies and conservation training research indicates that conservation can and does develop without compensation. Nevertheless, adults' conservation concepts include the compensation principle and influence…

Twenty-four girls and 19 boys who failed quantity conservation tasks on a pretest were retested after having been exposed to a classroom demonstration on conservation. Results indicated that children who understood number conservation improved their quantity conservation performance more often than children who showed no understanding of number…

Research in progress on some unresolved issues regarding the relationship of cognitive development and language acquisition is reported, especially the relationship between conservation of length and knowledge of relevant comparative dimensional adjectives. Much further investigation is recommended and possible educational implications are…

Evaluated the possibility that three-year-olds solve small-number conservation problems by an empirical procedure whereby the sets are quantified each time presented. Children chose the more numerous of two arrays, one containing two elements and the other three elements. Results disconfirmed claims that three-year-olds can conserve small numbers.…

Kindergarteners without number conservation ability were found to rely on the nonlinguistic strategy of choosing the greater amount in tasks requiring the choice of more and less. Mature semantic knowledge of "more" was found to precede that of "less." (Author)

Critics assert that Piaget's tests seriously underestimate operational thinking by failing to consider experimenter and presentation variables. This experiment studied the impact of these social influences on number conservation performance. Subjects viewed videotapes in which the task was presented by an adult or by puppets. Presentation mode…

Seventy percent of the children (non-conservers in length) who had to respond to length equality as opposed to inequality made the correct invariance judgment and could characterize their choices in invariance language, while still failing the standard verbal task in which the experimenter used such phrases. (Author/SJL)

A series of item analyses of the Concept Assessment Kit Conservation (Goldschmid) conducted for a sample of educable mentally retarded children showed that the probability of a correct response differed from task to task. Evidence indicated that the order of difficulty of the tasks resembled that for nonretarded children. (Author)

Elderly women volunteers were given a pretest battery of conservation tasks. Conservation scores were the highest yet recorded by elderly participants; consequently, training was not implemented. Results suggest that advanced chronological age does not guarantee poor conservation performance. (Author)