Nonverbal Assessment of Conservation of Number

MILLER, SCOTT A. Noncerbal Assessment of Conservation of Number. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 722-728. 3 experiments examined kindergartners' ability to conserve number in response to different forms of questioning. 3 experimental conditions were compared: nonverbal, in which subjects selected 1 of 2 rows of candy to keep; standard, in which subjects answered the typical same versus more question; and control, in which subjects selected 1 of 2 rows of candy, but without the pretransformation information on which a conservation judgment could be based. Correct answers were more frequent in the nonverbal condition than in the standard condition, but the difference between the conditions was small. The slight superiority of performance in the nonverbal condition resulted from the fact that children were less often consistently wrong on the nonverbal trials; there was no indication that a full mastery of conservation could be elicited earlier by the nonverbal procedure. Finally, interpretation of performance in the nonverbal condition must be further qualified by the fact that control subjects performed as well as nonverbal subjects.