A longitudinal study investigated children's ability to infer, from initial and final relative numerosity information, which of four transformations of a stimulus array had occurred: addition, subtraction, expansion, or contraction. It was expected that performance would reflect a sequence of three levels in understanding the effects of addition…

This study investigated the effect of different implicit definitions of equality upon children's performance on conservation tasks. In the study, traditional versions of conservation tasks are compared to modified versions in which initial equality is established through verbal counting of discontinuous quantities and measuring of continuous…

The extremely popular "training" studies, virtually all of which have been devoted to the attempt to experimentally induce conservation in nonconserving subjects, were discussed with respect to the logic underlying the method and surrounding theoretical and methodological difficulties. (Author/SDH)

In a study, few subjects accepted empirical evidence of nonconservation of discontinuous quantity and weight. These findings were interpreted as support for the organismic-developmental claim that lower forms of reasoning are transformed into structurally more advanced forms. (Author/ED)

The extent to which visual perceptual maturity contributes to intellectual efficiency, as measured by the ability to conserve, was investigated in 30 educable retarded children (mean CA 12 years) and 60 nonretarded children (30 matched for the retardates' CA and 30 matched for the retardates' MA). (CL)

Forty-eight kindergarten children were divided into four groups on the basis of their status (preoperational vs. transitional) and whether or not they received inversion-negation training. Results indicated no differences due to status, but differences due to training. Results do not confirm the contention that acceleration can only occur during…

Sixty subjects were identified from two grade levels (second and fifth), in elementary schools in Iowa and in Jordan. Cognitive and moral judgment tasks were administered to each subject. The cognitive tasks measured conservation, class inclusion, multiplicative classification, and spatial perception. The moral judgment tasks presented situations…

Peer interaction was found to be an effective instructional strategy for the acquisition of conservation in 41 normal second and third grade students and 18 learning disabled students (9-14 years old). After a pretest on a conservation task, nonconserving Ss were paired with conserving Ss in a social interaction situation. Post test results…

In this fourth part of a study of the relevance of existing knowledge about child development to social science curriculum development, some tentative suggestions are made for incorporating some of the fundamental ideas of Piaget into a teaching strategy. The ability of children to deal with classifications on the basis of single discrete…

The purpose of the present study was to determine if a developmental sequence could be established for the appearance of conservation. A series of four dimensional tasks and a conservation task were administered to 25 kindergarten girls and 25 kindergarten boys. The dimensional tasks tested understanding of comparative and superlative terms along…

The purpose of this study was to determine if an effective conservation training procedure would be one in which a child was confronted with opposing points of view. Subjects were 108 children with a mean age of 6.7 years. In two experiments, a group of three children (generally one nonconserver and two conservers) was required to respond with one…

GRADES OR AGES: Four-, five-, and six-year olds. SUBJECT MATTER: Cognitive areas of symbolism, classification, conservation, seriation, spatial relationship, and temporal relationships. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide is divided into six sections, one for each of the above cognitive areas. Each section lists materials and describes…

Three units of instruction were given to 20 four-year-old children and 34 five-year-old children. Unit I was designed to develop the children's ability to establish a length relation between curved lines; Unit II, to develop ability to conserve length; and Unit III, to develop ability to conserve length relations. Testing of the children occurred…

Relationships between school achievement and two theoretically different measures of intelligence, Piagetian and psychometric, are explored in 143 bright, average, and retarded elementary school students. Factor analyses of the California Test of Mental Maturity, the Metropolitan Achievement Test, the Stanford-Binet, and fifteen Piaget-type tasks…

Several curricula for early childhood education rely heavily upon Piagetian theory, based on the reasoning that children who have acquired operational structures of thought one or two years earlier than their peers are differently oriented to instruction than their more recently conserving peers. This paper emphasizes that there is no evidence…