Piaget's Water-level Task Research Articles

Sex Differences in Using Spatial and Verbal Abilities Influence Route Learning Performance in a Virtual Environment: A Comparison of 6- to 12-Year Old Boys and Girls.

Previous studies have reported sex differences in wayfinding performance among adults. Men are typically better at using Euclidean information and survey strategies while women are better at using landmark information and route strategies. However, relatively few studies have examined sex differences in wayfinding in children. This research investigated relationships between route learning performance and two general abilities: spatial ability and verbal memory in 153 boys and girls between 6- to 12-years-old. Children completed a battery of spatial ability tasks (a two-dimension mental rotation task, a paper folding task, a visuo-spatial working memory task, and a Piagetian water level task) and a verbal memory task. In the route learning task, they had to learn a route through a series of hallways presented via computer. Boys had better overall route learning performance than did girls. In fact, the difference between boys and girls was constant across the age range tested. Structural equation modeling of the children’s performance revealed that spatial abilities and verbal memory were significant contributors to route learning performance. However, there were different patterns of correlates for boys and girls. For boys, spatial abilities contributed to route learning while verbal memory did not. In contrast, for girls both spatial abilities and verbal memory contributed to their route learning performance. This difference may reflect the precursor of a strategic difference between boys and girls in wayfinding that is commonly observed in adults.

Piaget's water-level task: The impact of vision on performance

In the present study, the aim was to examine the differences in performance between children and adolescents with visual impairment and sighted peers in the water-level task. Twenty-eight individuals with visual impairments, 14 individuals with blindness and 14 individuals with low vision, and 28 sighted individuals participated in the present study. Fourteen sighted individuals participated blindfolded and 14 were able to use their sight. The findings indicate that use of vision can influence the performance in water-level task. However, in the restriction of visual ability (participants with blindfold), individuals with blindness might present better performance than blindfolded sighted participants.

Instruction Effect and Developmental Levels: A Study on Water-Level Task with Chinese Children Ages 9–17

This study investigated the effectiveness of instruction on spatial skills. It examined the effect of instruction of liquid horizontality on the performance on Piagetian Water Level Task (WLT) from a developmental perspective through two substudies. In Study 1, the WLT was administered to 256 boys and 230 girls of ages 9, 10, 12, 14, and 17 from Beijing, China, before and after instruction. The results indicate that the instruction effect was significant for the 6th (p < .05) and 8th graders (p < .001) but not for the 4th, 5th, and 11th graders. Study 2 examined instruction effect in contrast with practice effect. Participants were 69 boys and 52 girls of ages 9–14 from Beijing, China. The results indicate that children improve more on the WLT with the combination of instruction and practice than with practice alone (p < .01). The findings depict a relationship between cognitive development and instruction effect on the WLT.

A Test of the Piagetian Water-Level Task With Chinese Students

A sample of 486 children in Beijing, China, were tested on the water-level task (WLT; J. Piaget & B. Inhelder, 1948/1956). The participants were 256 boys and 230 girls from 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 11th grades. Three levels of mastery of the WLT were found. Level 1 consisted of 4th and 5th graders, who averaged about 71% correct. Level 2 consisted of 6th and 8th graders, who averaged about 83% correct. Level 3 consisted of 11th graders, who averaged 97% correct. The results provide partial support for the Piagetian theory of age-related developmental differences in performance on the WLT. The findings depict an interactive relationship of maturation with culture and education in the development of the ability to solve the WLT.

Writing Chinese characters and success on Mental Rotation Test.

Our recent study with Chinese and Chinese-American undergraduates indicated that writing Chinese characters was associated with better performance on the Piagetian Water-Level Task for Chinese-American men. The current study investigated whether the same effects would apply to the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test. Two alternative hypotheses (bilingualism and birth place) were also tested. Participants were two groups of Chinese-American undergraduates: 48 writers of Chinese (21 men, 27 women) and 130 nonwriters of Chinese (58 men, 72 women). Analysis suggested that writing Chinese and birth in the USA contributed significantly to the success on Mental Rotation Test. Students who were born in the USA and able to write Chinese scored the highest on this test. Being bilingual was not associated with performance on the Mental Rotation Test. Men performed significantly better than women.

WRITING CHINESE CHARACTERS AND SUCCESS ON MENTAL ROTATION TEST

Our recent study with Chinese and Chinese-American undergraduates indicated that writing Chinese characters was associated with better performance on the Piagetian Water-Level Task for Chinese-American men. The current study investigated whether the same effects would apply to the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test. Two alternative hypotheses (bilingualism and birth place) were also tested. Participants were two groups of Chinese-American undergraduates: 48 writers of Chinese (21 men, 27 women) and 130 nonwriters of Chinese (58 men, 72 women). Analysis suggested that writing Chinese and birth in the USA contributed significantly to the success on Mental Rotation Test. Students who were born in the USA and able to write Chinese scored the highest on this test. Being bilingual was not associated with performance on the Mental Rotation Test. Men performed significantly better than women.

Peer collaboration and children's representation of the horizontal surface of liquid

The role of peer collaboration in the acquisition of Euclidean spatial knowledge was examined in 10 and 12 year-olds (N=85). Following a pre-test on the Piagetian water-level task, children received supplemental experience observing liquid in tipped containers in one of three conditions; alone, with a peer of comparable ability (Matched Dyad) or with a peer of differing ability (Unmatched Dyad). Individual post testing occurred after the intervention. Based upon a model of cognitive change emphasizing the role of sociocognitive conflict in the disequilibration and reequilibration of thought, children working with peers were expected to show greater change in their understanding of horizontality than children working alone. Results supported the hypothesis that children working with peers would show greater change than children working alone, F(3, 84)=3.55, p=.02. Children in the Matched condition and the less competent partners in the Unmatched condition showed a significant improvement from pre-test to post test. Twelve year olds were more accurate than ten year olds (M's=17.2 vs. 23.3). Males outperformed females, although this difference was not significant. Social interactions within the two peer conditions were coded for transactions reflecting sociocognitive conflict and its resolution. Within the Matched condition significantly more talk occurred than in the Unmatched condition. There was also a significant relationship between the frequency of Organizational comments and cognitive change (r=−.37). Within the Unmatched condition there was a significant relationship between frequency of explanations and change (r=−.58). Disagreements did not relate to change in either dyadic condition. Findings demonstrate the value of peer interaction for supporting spatial thinking in middle childhood. Implications or classroom instruction are considered.

Explicit knowledge of gravity and the water-level task

Individual differences in conceptions of physical phenomena are frequently seen among normal adults. This article presents two investigations of the relation between explicit knowledge of gravity and performance on Piaget's Water Level Task. In both studies two groups were compared, one with extensive training in the physical sciences and one without. In the first study, a strong relation between success on the WLT and gravity-based explanations was found, but only in the High-Science Group. The aim of the second study was to investigate whether failure on the WLT could be due to problems in retrieving the relevant information. Minimum cuing to think about gravity yielded a statistically significant improvement for the High-Science Group only. The results are consistent with the notion that explicit knowledge of gravity can be a source of individual differences on the WLT and perhaps on other physical/spatial tasks as well.

Relationships among Gender, Cognitive Style, Academic Major, and Performance on the Piaget Water-Level Task

Many researchers have found that more college-age adults than would be expected fail Piaget's water-level task, with women failing more frequently than men. It has been hypothesized that differences in cognitive style may account for performance differences on the water-level task. In the present study, 27 male and 27 female architectural students and 27 male and 27 female liberal-arts students were assessed for their performance on both Piaget's Water-level Task and Witkin's Group Embedded Figures Test. No difference was found in performance of male and female architectural students on either task, but male liberal-arts students scored significantly higher than female liberal-arts students on both measures. A disembedding cognitive style predicted success on the water-level task for the architectural students but not for the liberal arts students.

Investigating the orientation effect on the water-level task: Who? When? and Why?

Four experiments with adults on Piaget's (J. Piaget & B. Inhelder, 1956) water-level task investigated previous reports that containers tilted at larger angles produce more error than those tilted at smaller angles. Experiment 1 found that this orientation effect occurred in both male and female subjects when the angles were manipulated between subjects but was absent in male subjects when manipulated within subjects. Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that male, and to a lesser degree female subjects, appear to benefit from exposure to easier (less-tilted) stimulus trials and, as a result, perform more accurately on subsequent difficult trials. Experiment 4 implicated mental rotation processes in the orientation effect by demonstrating that accuracy varied as a function of how far subjects needed to mentally rotate the container from its initial position to its test position. A developmental sequence is proposed in which relevant spatial abilities are assumed to facilitate acquisition of the principle that liquids are invariantly horizontal, which in turn leads to more accurate performance on the task. Differences in cognitive strategies may be responsible for the Gender X Orientation interaction observed under some conditions. One of Piaget's most fascinating developmental tasks is the water-level problem, designed originally to assess children's emerging understanding of Euclidean (three-dimensional) space (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956). According to Piaget, at some point during the concrete operations period, children come to realize that the location of objects can be specified in relation to stable vertical and horizontal coordinates in the environment. The development of this spatial system, in turn, leads children to observe in their everyday activities that the surface of a liquid remains invariantly horizontal regardless of the orientation of its container. Thus, when Piaget presented subjects with a partially filled bottle and asked them to predict how the water line would look if the bottle were tilted, he reported that those beyond the age of 9 years generally indicated that the surface would remain horizontal. It has become increasingly clear, however, that the water-level task may not be a very good index of this kind of spatial knowledge (Liben, 1991). Although children in the concrete operations period do indeed develop an understanding of Euclidean space—as demonstrated by their performance on other spatial tasks—there is little evidence that this cognitive accomplishment results directly in their acquiring the principle that liquids remain invariantly horizontal. In fact, subsequent research with the water-level problem has instead found that many adolescents and adults perform poorly on the task and also cannot

Observational training improves adult womens' performance on Piaget's water-level task.

Among women university students who lacked conceptual understanding of the principle that the surface of still water is always horizontal, a specific task procedure designed to optimize self-discovery of the principle proved effective. Successful learning was reflected in more accurate responses on an adjustment task and by a significant increase (p less than .01) in the number of subjects able to verbalize a correct strategy. In contrast to previous research the results show that adult womens' performance on the water-level task can be improved by observational training, suggesting that the female lag in spatial skills may depend on experiential factors.

Water Levels, Falling Objects, and Spiral Tubes: An Investigation of the General Naivete Hypothesis of Physical Task Performance

Abstract Although numerous studies have reported sex differences on Piaget's water-level task, these differences remain unexplained. One potential hypothesis for water-level task performance is the general naivete hypothesis, which states that subjects failing to perform accurately on horizontality tasks do so as part of a general lack of understanding of physical phenomenon. In this study, 38 men and 38 women completed paper-and-pencil versions of three physical principle tasks: the water-level, falling object, and spiral tube problems. Analyses indicated that performance on the falling object problem was closely related to water-level task performance, whereas the spiral tube problem was not. Results suggest that horizontality performance can be explained as a figure-ground problem and that this interpretation does not necessarily exclude the general naivete hypothesis.

Adults' performance on horizontality tasks: Conflicting frames of reference.

Many adults fail the Piagetian water-level task designed to assess children's abilities to use coordinate axes for representing physical phenomena. Although McGillicuddy-De Lisi, De Lisi, and Youniss (1978) reported that adults' difficulties virtually disappear with a crossbar horizontality task, this advantage might reflect the absence of an embedding nonoblique context. Consistent with this hypothesis, college students in Study 1 performed no better on an embedded crossbar task than on the water-level task. Performance was significantly better on a disembedded crossbar task. The predicted superiority of field independence was not found. In Study 2, college students' performance on the embedded crossbar and water-level tasks again did not differ significantly. Performance on disembedded crossbar tasks was better than on the water-level task, regardless of whether or not the symmetrical, pivoted nature of the crossbar was emphasized

Cognitive and Exemplary Modelling of Horizontality Representation on the Piagetian Water-level Task

For women who fail on the Piagetian water-level task, visual inspection and/ or verbal provision training procedures have either had no effect or led to only low to moderate improvement. The present experiment involved training within the observational learning paradigm and assessed its impact through multiple measurement. College women who failed a water-level item were selected as subjects. Pretested with different containers, they also supplied justifications to their answers and rated the certainty they associated with them. In the cognitive modelling group, a model performed part of the pretest series of horizontal water-line problems. In each first problem, she also verbalised her strategy, stressing the horizontality of the water surface and its parallelism with the surface on which the container rested. In the exemplary modelling group, the model acted identically, without voicing her strategy. In the no-modelling group, experimenter and subject chatted informally. There were two post-testing sessions, one followed immediately and the other 15 days later. Acquisition in the modelled series, as well as proximal generalisation in non-modelled but comparable series, occurred and persisted in modelling groups. In addition, enduring distal generalisation to non-modelled verticality was found in both groups, although it was higher in the exemplary modelling group. A similar pattern was obtained in justification production. However, positive correlations between post-test performance and certainty rating were infrequent. It appeared that exposure to modelled enactment of the rule-governed horizontality responses was the critical training component that fostered genuine improvement.

Sex Roles and Sex Differences in Adult Spatial Performance

Abstract Several studies have reported that many college students perform inaccurately on Piaget's water-level task and that this is more often true of women than men. In the present study, the relationships between academic interests, sex roles, and performance on Piaget's water-level task were investigated. College students (N = 194) completed a paper-and-pencil water-level task, the Self Directed Search (SDS; a career interest inventory), and the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Results indicated significant sex differences and that performance was associated with academic skills and interests measured by the SDS. Contrary to previous studies, masculine sex roles did not significantly contribute to the explained variance in water-level task performance.

Individual differences in water-level task performance: A component-skills analysis

Over the past two decades, several studies have indicated that many adults have difficulty in demonstrating the concept that liquids remain invariantly horizontal and that this is more often true of women than men. Theoretical explanations for these differences have centered around biological and sociocultural hypotheses. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on individual differences in adult performance on Piaget's water-level task and to offer an interpretation based on a component-skills analysis of water-level task performance. Water-level task performance is reduced to the subabilities of (a) visualperceptual skills, (b) mental imagery and rotation skills, (c) utilization of spatial coordinate systems, and (d) recall of relevant information. The utility of a component-skills analysis in understanding water-level task performance is discussed.

Sources of error in the Piagetian water-level task.

Task materials were devised which allowed two different explanations of the Piagetian water-level task to be distinguished. Two experiments are reported with 5-6 and 7-8 year olds in which both a predictive and a perceptual task were used. The results support Ibbotson and Bryant's explanation that the performance of young children is affected by a perpendicular bias. This effect was weaker, particularly among 7-8 year olds, in the perceptual task.

Horizontality as a Function of Sex and Academic Major

A paper-and-pencil Piagetian water-level task was administered to 250 undergraduate students within 5 college majors: engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, business, and language arts. Analysis showed significant differences between sexes and college majors. Men were significantly more accurate than women within each college major, and science majors were more accurate than liberal arts majors within each sex. Caution against treating college students as a homogeneous population in research using a water-level task is suggested.

A short version of a spatial activity questionnaire

Newcombe, Bandura, and Taylor developed a questionnaire measuring participation in space-related activities. The activities were classified as masculine, feminine, or neutral in gender stereotyping. A short version of this questionnaire was developed based on an item analysis of the responses by 485 introductory psychology students (236 women and 249 men). The 10 masculine, 10 feminine, and 10 neutral items chosen for the short form were given to 60 subjects (28 women and 32 men), along with a measure of spatial performance (Piaget's water-level task). Reliabilities (by coefficient alpha) were .79, .77, and .75, for the masculine, feminine, and neutral activity subscales, respectively. As with the original scale, women had a greater preference than men for feminine activities, men had a greater preference than women for masculine activities, and women and men had an equal preference for neutral activities. Masculine activity preference was associated with better water-level performance, with the relationship significantly stronger for women (r=.50) than for men (r=.10). Uses for the questionnaire in research on sex-related differences in spatial performance are suggested.

Understanding of Horizontality in College Women: Effects of Two Training Procedures

Previous research has shown that many college females cannot correctly represent the horizontal on the Piagetian water-level task. The present study focuses on some possible reasons for this and attempts to determine if performance on the task can be modified. Sixty-eight college women were tested on the water-level task and on related measures of verticality, spatial relations, and cognitive style. Those failing the water-level task (N = 49) were assigned to one of three conditions: (a) physical knowledge training, (b) Euclidean reference training, or (c) a control group, and then were retested on the same measures. As predicted, both training groups improved on the water-level task while the control group did not. However, contrary to predictions, reference training did not show transfer to related measures. The results have implications for understanding the role of experience in spatial abilities.