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McGarrigle and Donaldson's (1975) claim that the Genevan conservation test procedure underestimates the child's cognitive competence is examined. Experiment 1 reports a successful replication of their original work. We then consider several objections to McGarrigle and Donaldson's claim that the tasks they used did in fact test the child's ability to conserve number. Firstly, as only four counters were used in their study the child's judgment of numerosity could have been perceptually rather than conceptually based (Winer 1974). Secondly, teddy may have acted as a distracting agent leading the child to ignore the post-transformational state of the arrays and to answer the experimenter's post-transformational question (correctly) by mere repetition of his earlier response. In experiment 2 a procedure which is free from these objections, but otherwise similar to McGarrigle and Donaldson's procedure, is employed, together with appropriate comparison conditions. This procedure results in a decrease in the overall incidence of conservation responses, but fails to eradicate the difference between accidental and intentional transformation of the arrays (p < 0.001). In the final part of the paper we consider the implications of these and McGarrigle and Donaldson's results for our understanding of the social psychology of the conservation task.

Three experiments are reported which evaluate Rose & Blank's claim that repetition of the conservation question in the traditional conservation task is interpreted by the child as a cue to change his judgement. Experiment 1 indicated that repetition of the conservation question per se does not lead to a change of judgement in the child. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the facilitatory influence of Rose & Blank's one‐judgement procedure was specific to number conservation tasks. This procedure was found not to facilitate children's length, weight and liquid conservation responses. Experiment 3 found the one‐judgement procedure not to facilitate correct number conservation judgements in nursery children. These experiments suggest that Rose & Blank's original results were specific to the conservation task and age group they studied. The one‐judgement procedure would appear to promote counting in such tasks.

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