In the first experiment, observations were made of children ages four-and-a-half to five-and-a-half years of age who were induced to use counting or matching in a Piagetian number conservation task. The spontaneous matching and counting behavior of a more mature but not yet conserving sample was investigated in the second experiment. (RH)

Forty-five children aged four-and-a-half to five-and-a-half years old were given number conservation tasks in three conditions: (1) a count condition in which children were helped to count each set after the transformation; (2) a match condition in which children were helped to connect by a string each animal with its peanut; and (3) the standard…