Is Understanding the Experimenter's Intentions the Clue to Conservation Ability?

Abstract

The role of children's conceptions of conservation tasks was examined in this study. Specifically, this experiment assessed whether children's failure to conserve could be explained in terms of their inability to understand the experimenter's intentions, i.e. to test their knowledge. The children were tested using either the standard conservation of number task or an alternative version of the task. The tasks were presented in a context that provided the child with a reason to give a description of the task and to explain the experimenter's actions. Following the child's own description, specific questions were asked about their understanding of the task. For the analysis of the results, children were diagnosed as either conservers or nonconservers. Only a third of the conservers showed that they understood the experimenter's intentions. Moreover, the alternative version of the task significantly altered the children's conceptions of the task. The results indicate that understanding the experimenter's intentions is not a necessary prerequisite for successful performance on conservation tasks.