Facilitation of conservation of number in young children.

Abstract

Preschool and kindergarten children received seven tests of conservation of number which varied in the type and number of perceptual supports for conservation. Most of the tests with these supports facilitated performance in comparison to the standard conservation test. Coaservation appeared earlier than usual. There were significant effects of supports which emphasized correspondence and deemphasized length cues, unclear effects of the number of objects, and no effect of interest value of the stimuli. There was a set effect, i.e., beginning with the easiest test produced more conservation overall than did beginning with the most difficult test. It was proposed that the development of conservation involves several levels, varying from an early rudimentary understanding of invariance to. the final, mature conception of number. FACILITATION OF CONSERVATION OF NUMBER IN YOUNG CHILDREN Patricia H. Miller, Karen H. Heldmeyer, and Scott A. Miller University of Michigan The current controversy over whether preschool children believe in conservation of number is far from settled. Attempts to make the conservation task appropriate for young children have necessarily altered aspects of Piaget's original assessment procedure (Paget_, 1952). It is clear from such attempts (e.g., Mettler & Bever, 1967; Rotenberg & Courtney, 1968; Siegel, 1971) that. the ability to conserve is dependent on the procedures and criteria used in its assessment. It is not clear exactly when conservation emerges. One way to interpret these studies is in terms not of conservation vs. nonconservation but of levels of understanding. That is, preschool children may have a rudimentary understanding of the invariance of number which they can demonstrate under facilitating conditions. This understanding would be genuine but limited, and it may to several years before the concert becomes fully generalized, easily explained verbally, and demonstrated under all conditions. The purpose of the present stu:::y was to delineate levels of conservation by identifying conditions which facilitate or hinder conservation judgments. The approach was sim!..lar to that of Whiteman ani Peisach (1970), who gradually added perceptual and sensorimotor supports to standard tests of conservation of number and mass. They found that these supports facilitated judgments by kindergarten and third-grade children on the number but not cn the mass task. The present study examined the effects of several variables: degree of emphasis on one -to -one correspondence bett:een objects in the two arrays; the presence of length cues which may distract.the child's attention from number; the number of objects in each array; and the interest value of the stimuli.