The Development of Conservation in the Meru Children of Tanzania

Abstract

NYIn, RAPHAEL M. The Development of Conservation in the Meru Children of Tanzania. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 1122-1129. 72 schooled and 67 unschooled Tanzanian 8-14-year-olds from the Meru tribe were interviewed individually to determine their degree of mastery of convervation. 3 methodological defects in the application of Piaget's clinical method in cross-cultural studies were corrected: (a) linguistic and cultural barriers between the subject and the investigator, (b) the tendency to treat Piaget's conservation tasks as performance tests, and (c) the determination of subjects' ages from estimates or unreliable sources. Results showed that both schooled and unschooled Meru children develop conservation of substance, weight, and volume in an invariant sequence similar to that described by Piaget and at somewhat similar age levels as those reported for European children. These results suggest that methodological defects rather than the child's cultural environment are largely responsible for the often reported time lag in the development of conservation among children from non-European cultures.