The purpose was to determine whether different levels of education, race, and sex affect the degree of conservation of mass, weight, and volume attained by minimally educated adults. Subjects were 30 white and 30 black females and 30 white and 30 black males enrolled in Adult Basic Education classes, with 40 subjects each at grade levels 0-3, 4-6,…

This study investigated children's conceptions of death from a developmental perspective. Subjects were 170 children from grades K-4. Children were tested for conservation and interviewed, following story presentations about an elderly woman's death, to assess their understanding of three concepts concerning death: irrevocability, cessation of…

The article describes research which attempted to discover whether emotionally disturbed children functioned at Piagetian levels of abstract thought similar to normal children. (CD)

Twenty first-graders observed an adult model perform a quantity conservation task. The children were then tested on a series of generalization tasks immediately, after one week, and after three months. The results suggested that the social experience of observation appeared to activate a cognitive restructuring of the children's mental operations.…

Explores the hypothesis that there is a decline in operational thought ability in the elderly. Two samples of elderly males, with mean ages of 71.80 and 74.29 years respectively, were tested for their ability to conserve mass, surface areas and volume. (BD)

The present studies were designed to test the role of descrepancy between existing cognitive structures and current input and the amount of pleasure derived from successful processing of that input with respect to children's appreciation of humor. (Author/SB)

Forty students from the first, second, fourth, and sixth grades (10 from each), equally balanced for sex and representing a middle class SES, were individually administered mathematical tasks of matching, equality, cardination, and measure and Piagetian conservation task of number, length, and surface or area. (NQ)

In testing conservation of number in preschool children using both equality and inequality; 3- and 4-year-olds tended to use an acquiescence response set while 5- and 6-year-olds responded in terms of relative length. (ST)

Describes the intellectual development stages ascribed to children by Jean Piaget. Characteristics and examples are given for sensori-motor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational thinking periods. Implications are given for elementary school science education, including (1) formal instruction does not accelerate acquisition…

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)

A series of tests of dimensional understanding showed that there was a hierarchical sequence, with three year olds able to handle less complex tasks than four year olds. (Editor)