Concepedia

Abstract

S ummary . Almost all the children in a Junior school were tested individually, along the lines initiated by Piaget, in an effort to trace the development of the concept of invariance of substance, and to establish the arguments used by children to justify their answers. The three stages in the development of the concept given by Piaget have been confirmed, and some children give reasons for conservation similar to those proposed by him. On the other hand, our evidence does not always agree with that of Piaget, nor does it enable us to prove or disprove the assumption that the child arrives at the concept of conservation because he is able to argue logically in concrete situations.