Abstract
Piaget’s ideas have significantly influenced education and psychology, particularly the concept of conservation, which he had proposed as being acquired during the concrete operational stage. However, research conducted after Piaget found that children under the age of 6 are unable to understand his concept of conservation. However, more recent studies have found that three-year-olds may be able to acquire this concept, even when tested using the same tasks. But, this study addresses the issues of “fixity” and “reliability” for the concept of conservation. Then, the robustness (fixity and reliability) of Piaget’s concept of conservation (numbers/length) was examined by observing a four-year-old child who demonstrated the possible acquisition of this concept at the age 3, in this study. It was found that the child was able to robustly maintain the concept. Therefore, the study shows the possibility of accelerated cognitive development for Piaget’s concept of conservation. The reason may be that younger children have higher intelligence than those in previous generations. And, the grounds may be that of the influence of gene-environment interaction.
Highlights
Piaget’s ideas have significantly influenced education and psychology, the concept of conservation, which he had proposed as being acquired during the concrete operational stage
This study suggests the possibility of accelerated cognitive development for the conservation concept
Through regular surveys and scaffold testing, this study found that a four-year-old was able to robustly acquire the conservation concept for numbers and length, indicating acceleration in cognitive development from the previously presumed cut-off point of six years of age
Summary
Piaget’s ideas have significantly influenced education and psychology, the concept of conservation, which he had proposed as being acquired during the concrete operational stage. The conservation concept, which relates to the understanding of the equivalence of numbers, length, weight, mass, area, and volume requires abstract logical thought (transitive relations). The distance between the marbles in one of the rows is increased or decreased, after which the children are asked if the modified row has the same number of marbles as the other row. After they answer, they are asked to show that the number of marbles in both rows is the same. The acquisition stage for this task is estimated to be 6–7 years old
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