EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONSERVATION OF NUMBER1

TLDR

Piaget’s theory posits that children’s conservation of number develops when they realize that numerical equality remains unchanged despite alterations in shape or arrangement, a process linked to the maturation of logical thought. The study seeks to clarify how children transition from lacking to possessing conservation of number and to identify the psychological mechanisms underlying this shift. Researchers exposed children just below the typical age of conservation to systematically varied learning experiences designed to activate factors believed to drive conservation development. Any differential.

Abstract

In Piaget's theory of intellectual development (8), a central role is assigned to the child's conceptualization of the principle of conservation, i.e., his realization of the principle that a particular dimension of an object may remain invariant under changes in other, irrelevant aspects of the situation. For instance, children who lack conservation will assert that the relative weight of two objects has changed when the shape of one of them is altered or that numerical equality between two collections of objects no longer holds following a change in the length over which they extend. This phenomenon, which has been demonstrated for a variety of other dimensions, including those of volume, area and length, represents, according to Piaget, a manifestation of the immature level of functioning of the child's mental processes and of their failure to conform to the operational structures of logical thought. Although Piaget has described some of the precursors of this notion of conservation in children who have not yet attained this level, little is known thus far about the specific ways in which the transition from lack of conservation to the presence of conservation takes place. It is apparent, however, that an adequate explanation of this problem ultimately requires a clearer understanding of the psychological processes at work in this transition phase. One approach to this goal is to expose children presumed to be slightly below the age of onset of conservation to selected, systematically manipulated learning experiences, designed to call into play different factors believed to be important in the development of conservation. Any differential