A level prediction task, in the context of Piaget's conservation-of-liquid problem, was used to analyze the regularities of incompetence'' in the nonconserving or noncompensating child. (Author)

Results are discussed in terms of why children of the same age fail to conserve number in the standard conservation task and how complex number concepts might develop. (Author)

Results appear to indicate that the belief systems of the young child about the attributes of a stimulus person can be altered extensively by introducing characteristics completely unrelated to these attributes into the semantic representation of that person. (Authors)

Investigates which aspects of the mother behavior in interaction would be related, and in what way, to the child's acquisition of number conservation as a criterion measure of later cognitive development. (MP)

A data analysis procedure for testing the hypothesis that one task is a developmental prerequisite for another task is illustrated. The procedure was applied to new data on the acquisition of conservation concepts to test the hypothesis that synthesis, visual-scanning skills, and memory capacity are prerequisites of conservation mastery. (JMB)

Two studies sought to determine the developmental relationship between the child's use of counting as a notational symbol system to extract, compare, and reproduce numerical information and the development of number conservation. Subjects were four- to six-year-old children in Study 1 and seven- to nine-year-old learning disabled children in Study…

First, second, third, sixth, and ninth graders and college students were presented with 4 different tasks of surface-volume dissociation in order to see whether or not the conservation of one of these properties would wrongly induce a belief in the conservation of the other. (Author/JMB)

An extension of discrimination-learning theory based on the inhibition of stimulus intensity was proposed and supported as a mechanism of cognitive development. Among 48 normal and 37 educable mentally retarded children the predominant category of transistional children conserved at a low level of stimulus intensity but failed to conserve at a…

Analyzes cognitive developmental changes in the use of a convention for measurement among New Guinea's Oksapmin people. A total of 103 individuals (including unschooled children, unschooled adults, second-grade children, and sixth-grade adolescents) were administered three types of tasks assessing ability to compare lengths. (Author/RH)

Two studies indicate that Oksapmin children progress from premediational to mediational phases in their use of body parts to compare and reproduce number and that this change generally occurs prior to the development of concepts of number conservation. A third study shows that this general change is manifested in culturally specific ways.…

Examined empathy and conservation abilities of nonretarded children with autism and compared their performance to that of normally developing children. Autistic children performed surprising well, but not as well as normal children. There was a closer association between cognitive abilities and affective understanding among the autistic children…

Two studies of 7-, 8- and 9-year-olds assessed the effect on cognitive development produced by varying degrees of physical isolation of family dwellings and the consequent variation in the amount of verbal communication children had with peers and adults. (JMB)

Children in grades 1, 3, and 5 and college students were given a variety of judgment tasks contrasting the comparison of quantity with the comparison of proportions to determine whether the understanding of proportions develops before formal operations. Results indicated that the comprehension of abstract relations requires formal operations.…