To analyze the relationship of logical development and comprehension of syntax, 60 children aged 5-8 years were individually tested. Measures included class inclusion, conservation of substance and weight, a sorting test, and a test of comprehension of active and passive sentences. Class inclusion was not strongly related to syntactical…

Two studies were conducted to examine whether the elderly maintain the competence to solve Piagetian conservation problems. The results are discussed in terms of a distinction between competence and performance. (JMB)

A total of 156 kindergarten children were given Piagetian conservation of inequality tasks. The results indicated that number conservation is more likely with higher interest materials, with smaller aggregate sizes, with higher socioeconomic class females, and with children who perform better on addition and subtraction tasks. (DR)

Three studies of preadolescents and college students found that many children and adults failed to give logically correct answers when presented with misleading weight conservation questions. The results show the importance of suggestibility and context. (MDM)

This study was designed to determine the age relationships for each type of perceptual strategy used by nonconserving children during tests of conservation of quantity. The results indicate that the type of perceptual strategy reflected in children's answers varied with their age. (JMB)

Children 3.5 to 5.5 years of age who were unable to conserve length with Piaget's classical task did conserve length with parallel nonverbal tasks. Findings suggest that "preoperational" children apparently do not fail to conserve length because of centration, misleading perceptual information, or immature cognitive operations regarding…

Thirty mildly retarded children (mean age 9 years) participated in a study in which 24 of the children were trained to a prespecified criterion on one of three logical operations tasks involving length: identity conservation, equivalence conservation, or transitivity. (Author)

To discover what aspects of number conservation tasks prevent young children from conserving, two components of number conservation tasks were investigated. A test was made of the following two hypotheses: (1) the frequency of conservation responses varies significantly with the materials used, (2) the frequency of conservation responses varies…

Investigated was the distinction between identity conservation and equivalence conservation in 180 preschool, kindergarten and third grade students. Ss were assigned to one of six different counterbalanced orders of presentation for the conservation task battery. The factors were age, task (identity/equivalence), criterion (judgment only/judgment…

Suggests that although Piaget's psychological theory is developmental and dialectical in a general way, the lack of a developed philosophical basis leads to the subordination of a dialectical approach to static, anti-dialectical concepts. Hegel's theory of interaction and contradiction is examined to show that dialectical theory has a precise…

Data suggest that young children can rapidly learn to classify transformations correctly that do and do not affect liquid quantity. (Authors)

Conservation of a property is the ability to recognize that the property in question hasn't altered, even though other properties have been varied. It is Piaget's view, confirmed by empirical evidence that children are not able to conserve length until age 7 or 8. Recent concern over confounding variables led to the present study in which the…