The “magic” paradigm revisited

Abstract

The “magic” paradigm was devised to assess conservation of number in young children. Previous results with the paradigm have suggested that children acquire the ability to conserve number by 3 years of age. Because these results indicate a very precocious development of number conservation relative to performance on the classic conservation task, a comparison of these two procedures was made. Several differences which might account for the superior performance with the magic paradigm were noted: The arrays are presented successively rather than simultaneously, the arrays are presented side by side rather than parallel to one another, and the displacement is performed surreptitiously rather than openly. In the present research the magic paradigm was modified in several steps so that these differences between procedures were removed. None of the changes had an impact on the performance of 3-year-olds. It was concluded that insofar as small numbers are concerned, young children treat displacement as irrelevant to number. In regard to the question of whether young children are capable of conserving small numbers, it was concluded that no answer can be given. Basically, the problem is that we lack sufficient information on how young children solve the magic paradigm.