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Performance in number conservation tasks as a function of the number of items
Author(s) -
Cowan Richard
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1979.tb02145.x
Subject(s) - psychology , transformation (genetics) , function (biology) , number sense , test (biology) , statistics , identity (music) , arithmetic , social psychology , mathematics , ecology , mathematics education , biology , biochemistry , physics , evolutionary biology , gene , acoustics
It has traditionally been considered that successful performance in a test of number conservation entails the appreciation of a principle that holds for all numbers. In the first of two experiments 5 year old children were found to give more conserving responses to small number versions in a test of identity conservation than to a large number version. In the second experiment the superiority of performance with small number versions was reduced but not eliminated when the opportunity to requantify the array after the transformation was removed. The results are consistent with two recent accounts of number development which postulate the prior attainment of number conservation with small numbers.