Candy is Dandy and also Quicker: A Further Nonverbal Study of Conservation of Number

Abstract

Summary One hundred twenty kindergarten and first-grade boys and girls received six trials on which they judged the relative number of candies in two rows. Three experimental conditions were compared: Nonverbal, in which Ss expressed their judgment by selecting one of the two rows to take home and eat; Standard, in which Ss answered the “same vs. more” question which is typical in conservation studies; and Control, in which Ss selected one of the two rows of candies to keep, but without the pre transformation information on which a conservation judgment could be based. Correct answers were significantly more frequent in the Nonverbal condition than in either the Standard or the Control condition. Ss were more likely to be consistently correct on the Nonverbal trials than on the Control trials; they were less likely to be consistently wrong on the Nonverbal trials than on the Standard trials. These results suggest that the usual verbal methods of assessment may underestimate the young child's knowledge of conservation.