Experimental Analysis of the Development of the Conservation of Number

Some Issues Raised by a Non‐verbal Test of Number Concepts

“…Although this assertion about the course of the development of conservation of number derives a certain amount of support from the results of studies by Williams (14) and Churchill (15) and the modest success reported by Wohlwill (11) in establishing the notion of conservation by repeated exposure to the effects of addition and subtraction, it is extremely doubtful if WohlwilPs (10) results and those of the present study can be reconciled with it. Twelve of Wohlwill's subjects passed the addition-subtraction test and failed the conservation test.…”

“…This was preferred to Wohlwill's (11) later version on the grounds that the latter involved the making of a match between a given collection of elements and the corresponding symbolically indicated number, while the former paralleled the verbal test to be used (Dodwell,12) in that it entailed appreciation of the equivalence of the numerosity of two collections of elements.…”

Acquisition of Conservation: a Clarification of Piagetian Terminology, Some Recent Findings, and an Alternative Formulation

“…One frequently proposed alternative route toward the acquisition of con servation centers on the child's early capacity to recognize the maintenance of identity, either qualitative the absence of any change in material substance -(e g., Bruner, 1966;Hamel, 1971;Hamel et al, 1972), or quantitative -the absence of an addition or subtraction of substance -(e.g., Gelman, 1969;Mehler and Bever, 1967;Smedslund, 1961;Wohlwill and Lowe, 1962), or both. Piaget (1965;see also Wallach, 1969) has dispelled the identity argument on the logical grounds that if identity were playing a causal role there would be a better correlation between the recognition of identity and conservation.…”

The Quality of Cultural Tools and Cognitive Development: Gal’perin’s Perspective and Its Implications¹

“…Many studies, though, cast doubts on this argument. For example, under certain experimental conditions, preschoolers' abilities to conserve and decenter -the abilities usually attributed only to school age children -prove to be in fact higher than previously suggested [e.g., Donaldson, 1978;Wohlwill & Lowe, 1962;and many others]. Other studies show that many features of young children's thinking may vary in different cultures [e.g., Cole, 1990].…”