Piagetian Conservation Tasks Research Articles

No age differences? No problem

AbstractIn this essay we argue that the over‐reliance on age effects in the field of developmental psychology belies attention to actual development, obscuring attention to actual developmental processes. We use examples from diverse content areas in developmental psychology, such as narrative and autobiographical memory, personality trait development, Piagetian conservation tasks, pubertal timing, and Dynamic Systems Theory to build this argument. We conclude by arguing that focusing on individual differences in development, and cultural and historical context as major mechanisms of developmental processes will provide a fuller and richer understanding of the complexity of human development.HighlightsOver‐reliance on age differences does not explain development and obscures attention to individual differences and cultural context.

A computational model of student cognitive processes while solving a critical thinking problem in science

Critical thinking when engaged in science problem solving around even simple tasks such as the Piagetian volume conservation task is a complex endeavor. Tasks such as the conservation task often require the interaction of multiple cognitive systems. Parity judgment, retrieval, and lateral thinking are three examples of such systems interacting with critical thinking during a student’s attempt to solve the Piagetian task. The purpose of this computational ablation study is to establish the role of critical thinking as a necessary component of a system of cognition used for the completion of the Piagetian volume conservation task. This ablation study consists of three phases. The confidence interval between the ablation model and the elementary students do not overlap, indicating they are not statistically significantly different. This provides evidence that the model successfully emulates aspects of human cognition and the model can provide a robust picture of science student cognitive processes.

Embodied Action Improves Cognition in Children: Evidence from a Study Based on Piagetian Conservation Tasks.

Converging evidence highlights the relevance of embodied cognition in learning processes. In this study we evaluate whether embodied action (enaction) improves cognitive understanding in children. Using the Piagetian conservation tasks in 6–7 year olds, we analyzed quantity conservation conceptualization in children who were active participants in the transformation process and compared these results to those of children who were mere observers of an adult's demonstration (as traditionally conducted). The investigation was performed with 105 first-graders. Conservation tasks were demonstrated to half the children, while the other half actively carried out the transformation of matter. Our findings showed that active manipulation of the material helped children recognize quantity invariance in a higher proportion than when the demonstration was only observed. That is, their enactive experience enabled them to comprehend conservation phenomena more easily than if they were merely passive observers. The outcome of this research thus emphasizes how active participation benefits cognitive processes in learning contexts, promoting autonomy, and agency during childhood.

Effectiveness of Educomp Smartclass Program in terms of Conservation Ability of Middle Level School Students of Jabalpur

This research explore the effect of Educomp Smartclass Program in terms of Conservation Ability of Middle Level School Students of Jabalpur. Sample size was 755 of students and Conservation ability measured by Piagetian conservation Tasks to test conservation ability of class VI,VII and VIII CBSE middle school science syllabus. Analysis of the result revealed that the Educomp Smartclass Program has a positive impact on students since curiosity is generated among majority of the students through increased visualization.

English

The study investigated the influence of geographical location, gender and age on the performance of Piagetian Conservation tasks. Four conservation tasks; conservation of liquid, length, substance amount and number respectively were administered to children [4-6 years] from rural and urban Ghana and their performance on each task were recorded. Results indicated that there were no significant relationships among the performance of Piagetian conservation tasks and geographical location. Similar trends were noted in the performance of gender and age differences on Piagetian conservation tasks. Nonetheless, older children performed better on the conservation of liquid in a glass than younger children. Based on the results, both quantities and perceptual comparisons can be applied in future studies to examine some possible variations in children’s cognitive development.

Measuring Children's Age Stereotyping Using a Modified Piagetian Conservation Task

We examined five-year-old-children's age stereotyping using a modified Piagetian conservation task. Children were asked if two lines of objects were the “same” after one line had been made longer (transformed). A conversational account posits that children's answers reflect assumptions about the asker's motivation for the question (Schwarz, 1996). We reasoned that when asked by a young adult (puppet Experiment 1, experimenter Experiment 2) children would assume the question is to ascertain if they have noted a perceptual change and would provide answers focused on the change (length). If older adults are assumed to be in decline because of negative age stereotyping, however, children may assume an older adult (puppet, experimenter) is seeking clarification about line equality and would, therefore, give responses focused on the similarity of the lines (number). The expectation that a focus on length or number should differ across puppet/experimenter conditions was supported in both experiments and provides behavioral evidence for children's old age stereotyping.

Gesture highlights perceptually present information for speakers

Why do speakers produce gestures? This study tests the hypothesis that gesture facilitates the conceptual planning of speaking, and in particular, gesture promotes thinking about perceptually present information. This view implies that, when gesture is prohibited, people should be less likely to speak about such information. We tested this prediction among children (N = 50) who solved and explained Piagetian conservation tasks. For one set of conservation tasks, all children were allowed to gesture. For a second set of tasks, some children were prohibited from gesturing by wearing a cloth muff. When children were prohibited from gesturing, they expressed more non-present information and less perceptually present information in their explanations than when allowed to gesture. Thus, gesture production appears to highlight or lend salience to perceptually present information. We argue that gesture helps speakers decide what to attend to and therefore what to say.

Understanding quantity in semantic dementia

Patients with semantic dementia (SD) show relative preservation of number skills, contrasting with their severe multimodal semantic impairment. Underpinning this preservation, it is argued, is spared understanding of numerical quantity, a competence likened to a spatial map and subserved by the parietal lobes. The study investigated quantity knowledge in 14 SD patients to determine whether it is consistently preserved irrespective of disease severity or whether there are constraints on this preserved knowledge domain. Performance was well preserved on Piagetian conservation tasks, estimating object numerosity, and understanding of basic numerical magnitude. However, patients showed impairment on real-world estimation tasks, increasing with semantic severity. More surprisingly, on an analogue scale task, they produced implausible responses, suggesting degraded knowledge of precise numerical relationships. The findings challenge the view that knowledge of quantity is totally preserved in SD and suggest that the temporal lobes have a contributory role in the conceptual understanding of quantity.

The Relation Between Cognitive Development and Anxiety Phenomena in Children

We examined the relation between cognitive development and fear, anxiety, and behavioral inhibition in a non-clinical sample of 226 Dutch children aged 4–9 years. To assess cognitive development, children were tested with Piagetian conservation tasks and a Theory-of-Mind (TOM) test. Fears were measured by means of a self-report scale completed by the children, while anxiety symptoms and behavioral inhibition were indexed by rating scales that were filled out by parents. Significant age trends were observed for some anxiety phenomena. For example, younger children displayed higher fear scores, whereas older children exhibited higher levels of generalized anxiety. Most importantly, results of regression analyses (in which we controlled for age) indicated that cognitive development, and in particular TOM ability, made a unique and significant contribution to various domains of behavioral inhibition. In all cases, higher levels of TOM were associated with lower levels of behavioral inhibition. In general, percentages of explained variance were rather small (i.e., <6%), indicating that the role of cognitive development in various anxiety phenomena is limited.

Cognitive development and the interpretation of anxiety-related physical symptoms in 4–13-year-old non-clinical children

The present study examined developmental patterns in children's interpretation of anxiety-related physical symptoms and emotional reasoning (i.e., the tendency to infer danger on the basis of physical response information). A sample of 171 children aged between 4 and 13 years were interviewed after listening to a number of vignettes in which the presence and absence of physical symptoms was systematically varied. Results revealed the expected developmental pattern for anxiety-related interpretations of physical symptoms. More precisely, from age 7, children were increasingly capable of linking physical symptoms to the emotion of anxiety. Furthermore, support was obtained for an emotional reasoning effect. That is, children rated vignettes with physical symptoms as more dangerous than vignettes without such symptoms. While the emotional reasoning effect was present in children of all ages, this phenomenon was more salient among older children. Finally, cognitive development as measured by Piagetian conservation tasks appeared to influence children's anxiety-related interpretations of physical symptoms and emotional reasoning. Altogether, these findings are relevant for researchers who are interested in “physical symptoms-based” theories of childhood anxiety.

Understanding Conservation Delays in Children With Specific Language Impairment: Task Representations Revealed in Speech and Gesture

The authors investigated mental representations of Piagetian conservation tasks in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing peers. Children with SLI have normal nonverbal intelligence; however, they exhibit difficulties in Piagetian conservation tasks. The authors tested the hypothesis that conservation difficulties may be due to the degree to which children with SLI rely on external perceptual features of the task as opposed to internal cognitive knowledge about transformation. Twenty-nine children participated, 12 children with SLI (ages 7;0-10;5) and 17 typically developing peers (ages 5;4-10;9) who were matched either on chronological age (CA) task or on judgments on the conservation task (conservation matched [CM]). Children solved conservation tasks and then explained their reasoning. Explanations produced in speech and gesture were analyzed. In speech, children in the SLI group expressed proportionately fewer internal explanations than the CA group, but a similar proportion of internal explanations as compared with the younger CM group. In gesture, children with SLI did not differ from either CA or CM children. Children with SLI have weak internal representations of the concept of conservation, similar to those of younger children. Conservation representations appear to be closely related to language skills and verbal working memory.

What does an intermediate success rate mean? An analysis of a Piagetian liquid conservation task in the great apes

The study investigates what an intermediate success rate means in bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans. Apes participated in liquid conservation experiments where they had to track the larger of two different quantities of juice after various kinds of transformations [Suda, C., & Call, J. (2004). Piagetian liquid conservation in the great apes ( Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, and Pongo pygmaeus). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 118, 265–279). When making a decision, apes sometimes demonstrated hesitant behavior, concurrently pointing to both alternatives or successively changing their choice. Moderately successful apes showed more hesitation than highly successful or unsuccessful apes. The results are consistent with the cognitive conflict model: The experiments created a higher degree of cognitive conflict on moderately successful apes than on very successful or unsuccessful apes. This indicates that an intermediate performance reflects the joint operation and potential conflict between two different cognitive strategies (identity and appearance) inherent to the Piagetian conservation task.

Aprendizagem por interação e traços de personalidade

Esta pesquisa estudou a relação entre traços de personalidade e aprendizagem por conflito sócio-cognitivo. Participaram da pesquisa 120 sujeitos, de 5 a 7 anos, de três escolas públicas. Todos os sujeitos foram avaliados pela Escala Infantil de Personalidade e pela prova piagetiana de conservação de comprimento. Foram selecionados para o experimento 36 sujeitos que apresentaram nível não-conservador. Quatro traços de personalidade foram avaliados, neuroticismo, psicoticismo, extroversão e adequação. O experimento constituiu-se por três sessões de intervenção com sete situações de aprendizagem por conflito sócio-cognitivo em cada sessão, com pares de sujeitos, na prova de comprimento. Um dia após as intervenções realizou-se o pós-teste 1 e 25 dias após o pós-teste 2, ministrando a prova de conservação de comprimento, individualmente. A aprendizagem no pós-teste imediato foi explicada pelo traço psicoticismo e adequação.

Cognitive Development and Worry in Normal Children.

The present study examined the connection between cognitive development and childhood worry. A sample of normal children aged 3-14 years (N = 248) were interviewed about the presence and content of a personal worry. Furthermore, a worry elaboration score was obtained by encouraging children to think up potential negative outcomes associated with a series of worry topics. Finally, a number of Piagetian conservation tasks were administered in order to reliably assess the childrens' level of cognitive maturation. Results showed that there were positive associations among age and cognitive development, worry elaboration, and the presence of a personal worry. Correlational and regression analyses suggested a mediational model in which increased age and, in its wake, cognitive development lead to enhanced worry elaboration which, in turn, increases the possibility of a personal worry to emerge.

The connection between cognitive development and specific fears and worries in normal children and children with below-average intellectual abilities: a preliminary study

The present study explored the relationship between cognitive development and anxiety phenomena in 4–12-year-old children. Fears and worries of normal children ( n=176) were compared to those of children with below-average intellectual abilities (children with BAIA; n=105). We evaluated to what extent level of cognitive development as indexed by a Piagetian conservation task was associated with the presence of fears and worries. While normal children and children with BAIA did not differ with regard to the content of their fears and worries, normal children more frequently reported such anxiety phenomena during the semi-structured Anxiety Interview than did children with BAIA. Furthermore, in normal children, evidence was found to suggest that level of cognitive development contributes to the experience of fears and worries. That is, anxiety phenomena were more prevalent among those children who passed a Piagetian conservation task. However, when anxiety phenomena were assessed by means of the Koala Fear Questionnaire (KFQ), a different picture emerged. KFQ data suggested that fears were less frequent in normal children and those children with BAIA who had a higher level of cognitive functioning. Apparently, the Anxiety Interview and the KFQ tap quite different aspects of anxiety. The KFQ seems to measure primitive fears that are likely to be prevalent among children with limited cognitive capacity, whereas the Anxiety Interview assesses more sophisticated anxiety phenomena that probably depend on high levels of cognitive functioning.

Divergence of verbal expression and embodied knowledge: Evidence from speech and gesture in children with specific language impairment

It has been suggested that phonological working memory serves to link speech comprehension to production. We suggest further that impairments in phonological working memory may influence the way in which children represent and express their knowledge about the world around them. In particular, children with severe phonological working memory deficits may have difficulty retaining stable representations of phonological forms, which results in weak links with meaning representations; however, nonverbal meaning representations might develop appropriately due to input from other modalities (e.g., vision, action). Typically developing children often express emerging knowledge in gesture before they are able to express this knowledge explicitly in their speech. In this study we explore the extent to which children with specific language impairment (SLI) with severe phonological working memory deficits express knowledge uniquely in gesture as compared to speech. Using a paradigm in which gesture-speech relationships have been studied extensively, children with SLI and conservation judgement-matched, typically developing controls were asked to solve and explain a set of Piagetian conservation tasks. When gestures accompanied their explanations, the children with SLI expressed information uniquely in gesture more often than did the typically developing children. Further, the children with SLI often expressed more sophisticated knowledge about conservation in gesture (and in some cases, distributed across speech and gesture) than in speech. The data suggest that for the children with SLI, their embodied, perceptually-based knowledge about conservation was rich, but they were not always able to express this knowledge verbally. We argue that this pattern of gesture-speech mismatch may be due to poor links between phonological representations and embodied meanings for children with phonological working memory deficits.

Piagetian Conservation in College Students: A Classroom Demonstration

College students are often surprised to learn that a preoperational child can be misled by a Piagetian conservation task. A simple demonstration can show how the students themselves can be misled into assuming that deforming a circle into an ellipse with the same circumference does not change its area.

Perceptual strategies in the estimation of physical quantities by orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus).

The perceptual strategies used by 4 orangutans (2 subadults, 2 adults) when choosing the larger of 2 volumes in a Piagetian conservation task were investigated. Three possible perceptual strategies were investigated: (a) direct perceptual estimation of the container's content independent of its shape, (b) use of the spatial and temporal cues provided by the pouring of liquid from one container to another, and (c) ability to initially identify the larger volume and track it across transformations disregarding misleading perceptual cues. Results indicated that the direct perceptual estimation strategy was the best candidate to explain the orangutan's systematic choice of the larger of 2 quantities.

Intuitive rules in science and mathematics: the case of ‘Everything can be divided by two’

In the last twenty years, researchers have studied students’ mathematical and scientific conceptions and reasoning. Most of this research is content‐specific. It has been found that students often hold ideas that are not in line with accepted scientific notions. In our joint work in mathematics and science education, it became apparent that many of these alternative conceptions hail from a small number of intuitive rules. We have so far identified two such rules: ‘The more of A, the more of B’, and, ‘Everything can be divided by two’. The first rule is reflected in students’ responses to many tasks, including all classical Piagetian conservation tasks (conservation of number, area, weight, volume, matter, etc.), all tasks related to intensive quantities (density, temperature, concentration, etc.), and tasks related to infinite quantities. The second rule is observed in responses related to successive division of material and geometrical objects, and in seriation tasks. In this paper we describe and discus...

Intuitive rules in science and mathematics: the case of ‘more of A ‐‐ more of B’

In the last twenty years researchers have studied students’ mathematical and scientific conceptions and reasoning. Most of this research is content‐specific. It has been found that students often hold ideas that are not in line with accepted scientific notions. In our joint work in mathematics and science education it became apparent that many of these alternative conceptions hail from the same intuitive rules. We have so far identified two such rules: ‘The more of A, the more of B’ and, ‘Everything can be divided by two’. The first rule is reflected in students’ responses to many tasks, including all classical Piagetian conservation tasks (conservation of number, area, weight, volume, matter, etc.), in all tasks related to intensive quantities (density, temperature, concentration, etc.), and in tasks related to infinite quantities. The second rule is observed in responses related to successive division of material and geometrical objects, and in successive dilution tasks. In this paper we describe and di...