Conservation of Number Task with Small and Large Quantities on Male and Female Preschool Children

1. Summary and Introduction Revolutionary psychologist Jean Piaget reasoned that early development occurred in a specific stage-like manner. Through extensive research and experimentation Piaget concluded that development occurs in stages, with a qualitative shift in the organization and intricacy of cognition at each specific stage. Piaget categorized the steps of children's early development in to four specific stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. As he presented his theories Piaget carefully emphasized that children are not less knowledgeable or slower than adults, they understand the world in a distinct way. Through the categorization of children in to distinct stages Piaget began to understand what tasks children were capable of performing at a given stage. At the preoperational level (roughly ages 2-7) children posses symbolic thought, can apply logical principles to symbols (not objects) and can perform reversibility, identity and compensation tasks. However, many children during Piaget's preoperational stage are not cognitively developed enough to succeed at conservation tasks. Piaget came to the conclusion that children fail at conservation tasks due to the fact that their thinking is not governed by principles of reversibility, compensation and identity just yet. As with any study, this particular research paper contains five important features which outline the idea being addressed and hypotheses that will be tested. The central phenomenon in this study is the phenomenon that young children have the ability to conserve with numbers at a preschool level. The linking hypothesis addressed in this study is that young children will have the ability to actively conserve using numbers grouped in small amounts at the preschool level. Susan A. Rose and Marion Blank (1974) conducted a classic study which investigated the effects of certain types of question on children and the responses children produced. The central phenomenon of the Rose and Blank study was the manner of questioning the children in typical conservation tasks and the child's subsequent response. Rose and Blank's considered two specific linking hypotheses in their study. The first hypotheses stated that when the child has just declared the rows equal (or unequal) he interprets the request for a second judgment as a signal to change his response. When the subject is not in this predicament (having to judge the arrays once), he is more likely to respond to the correct central demand (the evaluation of number). Rose and Blank's second hypothesis implicitly states that children would have an easier …