seminar 2: piaget
Seminar reading: Miller (1982) – The focus of this paper is on 5 and 6-year-old children’s conservation of number to test Piaget’s view that children cannot conserve number until 7-8yrs
1) What were the main issues the author had with the traditional conservation tasks, which inspired him to carry out these studies?
the sole purpose of the transformation in these tasks is to draw the child’s attention and deliberately looks as though it might change the number of objects etc which does not reflect real life transformations in most cases
children may have just been trying to be good - why would an adult be asking the question if nothing had happened?
Background to the paper
Traditional conservation tasks typically involved an experimenter (usually an adult) showing children two objects or groups of objects that initially appear the same, with one group of objects then intentionally altered before the children are asked to judge whether there are any subsequent differences. In Study 1 of Miller’s (1982) article, a range of traditional tasks were used, and also a range of non-traditional tasks, to measure children’s conservation abilities.
2) In study 1, Miller used the 4 kinds of non-traditional tasks below, involving a number of different stimuli and types of transformations. Identify, and briefly describe the stimuli and how they were transformed.
‘animate objects which rearrange themselves’
The stimuli for the crickets trial were live crickets. The crickets in the two collections were
presented in identical glass containers. At the start of the trial there were 11 crickets in each
container, all bunched in one of the two compartments within the container. Once the child had
agreed that the numbers were equal, the experimenter removed the dividing wall in one container, thus allowing the crickets in that collection to spread throughout the entire container. Note that on this trial and the cars trial, in contrast to the boats trial, the child was able to see the experimenter's action that initiated the transformation.
‘inanimate objects which are moved by natural forces (e.g. gravity)’
The stimuli for the cars trial were two rows of five toy cars. The cars were initially presented in
one-to-one correspondence facing downward on two inclined boards. The experimenter then removed a braking peg on one board, causing the cars on that board to run downhill and assume a more spread-out appearance.
There were two trials with candies as stimuli. On both, the trial began with two rows of five
candies lined up in one-to-one correspondence. A small doll was placed next to each row and
introduced as that row's 'owner'
‘human-produced changes which are incidental to some other goal’
On the candies-bunch trial, the experimenter explained that one doll wanted to 'take his candies home' and therefore was going to 'put them in a bag'. The candies in one row were then scooped up and placed in a transparent plastic bag.
‘human-produced changes which are accidental’. (Could ask the students why the author used these different kinds of stimuli)
On the candies-spread trial, the experimenter made one doll chase the other in and out of the rows, the result being an apparently accidental spreading of one row.
3) What were the results of this study (i.e. what was the difference between children’s success at the traditional vs. non-traditional tasks), and what conclusion did the author come to about this finding?
no significant difference so standard traditional tests are relevant
4) In study 2 of the paper, what stimuli were used and how does the author justify that these stimuli are likely to produce different results from both the traditional conservation of number tasks, and indeed, the non-traditional tasks used in study 1)?
“specifically familiar” stimuli of children who are friends to the child
5) What were the findings from study 2?
the children still couldn’t conserve the row - they thought that their friends being spread out meant there were more of them and vice versa, giving evidence for piaget’s theory
6) In study 3, what kinds of transformation of the stimuli did the experimenter focus on, and how did this differ from study 1?
accidentally and incidentally - nothing was moving itself through natural forces
7) What were the findings from study 3, and how does the author explain them?
significant results because the adults were asking them questions for a reason
8) What does the author conclude (i.e. what does this tell us about Piaget’s view on children’s conservation of number?
piaget was overwhelmingly right