Surprise and Memory as Indices of Concrete Operational Development

Normal and retarded children's use of color, number, length, and continuous quantity as attributes of identity was assessed by presenting them with contrived changes in these properties. Mean Binet MAs were 6.3 for normals and 6.2 for retardates. Surprise to the change of color occurred at lower MAs than surprise to all quantitative properties among normals and to continuous quantity and (nonsignificantly) to length among retardates. More retardates than MA-matched normals were surprised at the change of quantity ( p = .058), but there were no other significant group differences. Study II employed normal children with mean MA = 5.2. Significant relations between surprise and both recognition and reconstruction memory were found for color and number. Surprise and correct memory responses for color preceded those to number, which preceded logical verbal responses to a conventional number-conservation task.