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Conservation without conversation? An alternative, non‐verbal paradigm for assessing conservation of liquid quantity
Author(s) -
Wheldall Kevin,
Poborca Barbara
Publication year - 1980
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.2044-8295.1980.tb02738.x
Subject(s) - psychology , conversation , nonverbal communication , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , stimulus (psychology) , social psychology , communication
A non‐verbal paradigm for assessing conservation based on an operant discrimination learning procedure is described. Children were trained to press a button when shown two jars containing equal amounts of water and to refrain from pressing when the amounts were unequal. In this way children were taught to respond to a non‐verbal request by wordlessly signalling their evaluation of the relationship between two quantities. When criterion was reached, one of two quantities previously judged equal was poured into a different shaped jar and an evaluatory response to this transformed stimulus was non‐verbally requested. Initial results suggest that young children who could not conserve within the traditional verbal procedure were more likely to demonstrate*** conservation within the non‐verbal paradigm and that traditional Piagetian tasks are verbally biased.