The study investigated the effects of basic concepts training on conservation acquisition in 41 kindergarten children (17 White boys, 15 White girls, 6 Black girls, and 5 Black boys). Only the conservation training program resulted in significant effects, and that was for the White students alone. (Author)

The "magic" paradigm was devised to assess conservation of number in young children. Subjects were 32 three- to four-year-old children. (MP)

Examined seriation, conservation, and theory of mind abilities in 16 adolescents and adults with autism, in 16 adolescents and adults with mental retardation, and in 16 normally developing children. Found that participants with autism performed better than participants with mental retardation on seriation, while no differences emerged between…

Reports on an exploratory study of the ideas that students in the fourth semester of engineering have about conservation. Reviews the Piagetian position on the importance of conservations in logical operational structures in child development. Discusses the development of conservations in science during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and…

Results of two experiments with five-year-olds indicated that: (1) conservation can be quickly taught with lasting results; (2) training on a limited range of exemplars will produce generalized correct responses to other, untrained classes of conservation problems; and (3) children's explanations of their judgments change as a result of exposure…

Presents an experiment that demonstrates conservation of momentum and energy using a box on the ground moving backwards as it is struck by a projectile. Discusses lab calculations, setup, management, errors, and improvements. (JRH)

Play dough is the perfect medium for creating, observing, and thinking about change. Whether the use of play dough is seen as play or a demonstration of physics, through its use children learn about transformations of consistency, color, and identity; and teachers observe how young children learn. (LB)

Event-related potentials (ERPs) of five- to seven-year-old girls were measured while the girls performed a visual selective attention task and a Piagetian conservation task. Results suggested more anterior ERP sources for nonconservers than conservers during early stimulus analysis, and more lateralized ERP sources for conservers than…

Investigated the effects of verbal-mediated modeling on transfer to a criterion-referenced paper/pencil task in 51 low-IQ students. Results indicated no significant correlation between concrete operational reasoning and reading comprehension, mathematical reasoning, or language expression. (JAC)

The author offers the premise that the field of learning disabilities is at a critical point in development and that the research literature manifests such trends as few references beyond special education, emphasis on conversation tasks rather than unifying themes (equilibration and structuralism) of J. Piaget, and reductionist tendencies. (CL)

Piaget and Inhelder's Water-level Task, the Preschool Embedded Figures Test, and a mental processing measure called Mr. Cucui were administered to 42 four-year-olds. The significant correlation between Mr. Cucui and the horizontal/vertical bottles was discussed from the neo-Piagetian perspective of Pascual-Leone's theory of constructive operators.…

Two experiments were carried out in which groups of children (mean age = 68 months) were matched on number, length, mass, and liquid conservation scores and then trained on a distance-layout task developed by Inhelder et al (1974). (Author/MP)

In a replication study, children 3 and 4 years old were given verbal rule training in order to probe the importance of identity, reversibility, and compensation explanations in training number and length concepts. Among the results, as before, identity was found to be the most significant factor in conservation acquisition. (Author/RH)

Two experiments were conducted to investigate children's performance on different number versions of identity and equivalence conservation tasks. Subjects were 88 children ranging in age from four to six years. (MP)

In a study to determine procedural effects of volume conservation tasks performed by adolescent females, the results revealed that the LaVatelli water displacement test was significantly more difficult than the Elkind test or Piaget's test. (Author/RL)