The present study, and the development of the instrument for the measurement of conservation, arose in the context of wishing to demonstrate finely discriminating individual differences in this cognitive capacity. (Author)

This research forms part of a long-term program of work on the general relationship between intrapersonal stress and the development of effective cognitive processes. (Author/RK)

Critics assert that Piaget's tests seriously underestimate operational thinking by failing to consider experimenter and presentation variables. This experiment studied the impact of these social influences on number conservation performance. Subjects viewed videotapes in which the task was presented by an adult or by puppets. Presentation mode…

Seventy percent of the children (non-conservers in length) who had to respond to length equality as opposed to inequality made the correct invariance judgment and could characterize their choices in invariance language, while still failing the standard verbal task in which the experimenter used such phrases. (Author/SJL)

Five-year-olds were found to give more conserving responses to small number versions than to a large number version of a test of identity conservation. Superiority of performance with small number versions was reduced but not eliminated when the opportunity to requantify was removed. (Author/SJL)

One hundred and thirty-eight post-graduate students enrolled in a Diploma in Education course were tested for their ability to conserve weight and volume. A methodological criticism of the earlier work of Elkind (1962) and Towler & Wheatley (1971) is offered which casts doubt on the extremely high proportion of non-conservers of volume reported in…

Assessed the authenticity of conservation attainment through an observational learning paradigm. First grade children (N=60) were exposed to either a peer or adult model who was either present or absent during a series of tasks. No correlation was found between social influence and observational acquisition of conservation. (Author/JAC)

A nonverbal paradigm for assessing conservation based on an operant discrimination learning procedure is described. Initial results suggest that young children who could not conserve within the traditional verbal procedure were more likely to demonstrate conservation within the nonverbal paradigm and that traditional Piagetian tasks are verbally…