Accessing Concrete Operational Reasoning Strategies in Preoperational Children

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study addresses three questions: (a) Are the cognitive skills that underlie games of make-believe play-specific or are they of a more general cognitive order? (b) Is the reported prevalence of identity explanations on the conservation training tasks a function of the standard conservation inquiry, or is it an indication that the identity explanation is a more primitive cognitive precursor of concrete operational reversibility? (c) Does SES affect the ability to formulate the logical explanations required for the conservation task? Following conservation pretests, 64 nonconserving 4 and 5 year olds were assigned to four different conditions: Group 1 participated in pretense play, Group 2 was exposed to a correct conserving judgment of quantity, Groups 3 and 4 received only conservation posttests. The conservation posttests administered to Groups 1, 2, and 3 deviated from the usual standard procedures by providing the subjects with a correct judgment and a set of specific questions designed to...