Hypothesizes that children may misunderstand the task required by Piaget's test and that researchers may therefore underestimate the children's cognitive capacities. Tests the hypothesis by dividing 48 children of both sexes into two groups, those taking the standard tests and those taking a test restructured to limit ambiguity. (BE)

This study investigated the influence of knowledge of conservation on recall of an event by 4- to 7-year-old children. Changes in recall over time were found to follow an inconsistent pattern and seemed to be unrelated to changes in the subject's stage of development. (Author/JMB)

Preschoolers made judgments about solutions in which substances were dissolved. Preschoolers (1) distinguished visual appearance from underlying reality; (2) recognized the conservation of taste, smell, and dangerous properties; and (3) by age five recognized that matter can be decomposed into pieces too tiny to be seen by the naked eye. (BC)

A study of the effects of three types of conservation judgments (qualitative, quantitative, and equivalence) on both continuous and discontinuous substances in 24, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. Subjects were tested on conservation ability with and without verbal justification. Half of the subjects were provided a memory aid, the other half were not.…

Based on author's PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles (1967).

This study tests the hypothesis that components of play such as immagination contribute to cognitive development. Twenty-four middle-class children attending a university-affiliated preschool were observed for 20 one-minute play observations during the Spring Semesters of 1978 and 1979. Play was coded using categories for both social (solitary,…

Two studies examined how nonconservers use the dimensions relevant to quantity in the conservation of substance task. Most nonconservers are very selective in their use of the information provided by these dimensions. Most preschool and kindergarten nonconservers used length to define amount, while ignoring width. This was true regardless of how…

Neurological immaturity, cognitive stages or lack of readiness may be erroneously inferred from young children's task performance. An alternative hypothesis suggests that an inadequate analysis of the criterion task may, in fact, account for children's inability to perform successfully. To support this thesis, investigators examined the four-part…

This study investigated whether 4- and 5-year-old children can evoke and use kinetic imagery and whether the ability to use kinetic imagery depends on the attainment of concrete operations. Results yielded no evidence of association between kinetic imagery and conservation. (Author/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…

Portions of this paper were read at the Eastern Psychological Association meeting, April 1968, Washington, D.C. (DR)

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

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…

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)