Beverly Brekke

Conservation and Sex

Sex differences have often been compared incidentally in studies of Piagetian conservation. Most results showed no sex differences related to the acquisition of conservation (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9) and support Piagets conclusions that sex differences are insignificant. Conversely, several studies have reported sex differences in favor of male Ss (4, 5. 8) . Goldschmids (4) examination of the relation of sex to types of conservation indicated that boys performed on a higher level than girls on all tested tasks of conservation including conservation of substance, weight, quantity, discontinuous quantity, number, area, distance, length, twoand three-dimensional space. In the present study 46 boys, 35 girls in first grade in two public elementary schools in the Grand Forks, North Dakota area were given five conservation of number and substance tasks. Girls conserved more often on 4 of the 5 tasks and significantly ( p < .01) so on cwo conservation of substance tasks. The one task on which boys conserved more often (conservation of number) showed no significant differences. These results are in contradiction to earlier reported studies and indicate that sex differences are related to conservation of substance. These conservation tasks were administered by a young woman but in most studies E has been male. It seems sex of tester should be evaluated.

Conservation and Reading Readiness

Summary Conservation has been found to be positively and moderately correlated with reading readiness, and only slightly less correlated with reading readiness than intelligence as measured by the Primary Mental Abilities Test. A moderate correlation also existed between conservation and intelligence. It was suggested that conservation would be worthy of attention by primary teachers as a predictor of the childs readiness for learning to read.

Conservation as a Predictor of Reading Achievement.

Conservation and intelligence have been found both singly and in combination to be positively related to two measures of reading given 7 mo. after the administration of the conservation measures. However, neither conservation nor intelligence made any significant independent contribution to the prediction of the reading measures when a reading readiness test, administered at the same time as the conservation tasks, was considered in the prediction of reading achievement. When intelligence and reading readiness were separately partialled out of the relationship between conservation and the two measures of reading achievement, the partial correlations dropped to a near-zero value.

EFFECT OF A GROUP PERCEPTUAL-MOTOR TRAINING PROGRAM ON KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN

For 21 boys and 24 girls in a middle-class kindergarten no differences in Identification of Body Parts, Copy Forms, or Motor Skills Test of the Rosner-Richman Perceptual Survey were noted. Scores increased from September to May testing on copying and motor skills, e.g., walking a rail, balancing, handling balls, as expected.

Conservation of Weight With the Mentally Retarded.

Summary Institutionalized retardates (N = 54), Public School retardates (N = 65), and a group of normal subjects (N = 112) were compared at several mental age levels on three conservation of weight tasks. The functioning of normal subjects was higher at each mental age level. An analysis of covariance was performed on the number of correct responses on the three tasks, covarying mental age, and not including any normal subjects above 13 years 11 months in mental age (N = 82). Normal subjects conserved significantly more often than either retardate group in the covariance analysis also.

Reversibility Preceding Conservation and Reading Readiness.

Summary First grade boys and girls (N = 81) were assessed for reversibility and conservation on five Piagetian tasks. Reading readiness achievement was measured by the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests: Readiness Skills. Of the 81 children, 19 were conservers (succeeded on all five tasks for both reversibility and conservation); 39 were transitional conservers (attained reversibility but not conservation); and 23 were nonconservers (did not acquire consistent reversibility or conservation). The transitional conservers were found to be indistinguishable from nonconservers on seven reading readiness tasks. Both groups were readily discernible from the conservers on these tasks.

Conservation of Weight with the Motorically Handicapped

1Jeanne Hanson, Marcia Johnson, and Martha Worner, students in the Center for Teaching and Learning, assisted the authors in collecting data for this study. The concept of conservation is an aspect of Piaget’s theoretical formulations that has been validated in numerous investigations. Piaget (1966) reported that the concept of conservation of weight had developed in 75°~ of children tested at 9 to 10 years of age. Piaget’s study was replicated by Elkind (1961 ), with results demonstrating that 7396 of the children attained conservation of weight at 9 years. Differences in the acquisition of conservation of weight have been found in comparative studies of normal and exceptional Ss. Deafness and the relationship of its effect upon cognitive development was examined by Furth (1964). The performance of 8-year-old deaf children was found to be similar to

Conservation and Reading Achievement of Second Grade Bilingual American Indian Children

Summary Bilingual Indian second grade children (N = 38) from three New Mexico reservation schools were administered five Piagetian conservation tasks (two conservation of number tasks and three conservation of substance tasks), the Draw-A-Man Test, and the Classroom Reading Inventory. The mean grade placement level was 2.39; 31% of the subjects conserved on all tasks. Correlations were found between three measures of reading level (independent, instructional, and frustration) and success on the conservation tasks. Correlations ranged between .27 and .42. Draw-A-Man Test scores were then partialled out from these correlations; the correlations were essentially unchanged, mainly because of a low correlation of the Draw-A-Man Test with the scores on the Classroom Reading Inventory.

Relationships among different stages of Piagetian tasks and spatial relations in adolescents.

High school students aged 15 through 19 years (N = 116) were administered three Piagetian type tasks (conservation of weight, paper and pencil tests of concrete-operational reasoning and formal-operational reasoning) and a measure of spatial relations (the Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board Test). While a path analysis showed there were logically expected relationships among the tasks, neither sex differences nor age differences were found on any of the measures.

Effect of a visual motor program on school achievement: a longitudinal study.

Controversy is evident concerning the efficacy of visual-motor training and success in school. Hamill (3) concluded after an extensive review that the effectiveness of these programs was not substantiated by the evidence. A contrary conclusion was drawn by Greenspan (2) when relating the visual motor programs to reading. The present study, a follow-up (4), investigated the relationship between the effect of a visual motor program on kindergarten children and their subsequent school achievement in first, second and third grades. Subjects were enrolled in six classes. of three elementary schools in Grand Forks, North Dakota. All schools had predominantly middle-class populations. Of the 60 students involved in all four years of the study, 26 were males and 34 were females. The mean intelligence score, as measured by the Slosson Intelligence Test, was 119.35 and ranged from 85 to 154. The mean chronological age was 66.42 mo. in kindergarten. During the first through third grades, the vocabulary, comprehension and composite scores were screened from the following tasks: Gates-MacGinitie, Primary A (first grade); Gates-MacGinitie, Primary G (second grade); and the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (third grade). While the testing took place over a 4-yr. period, the treatment was used only during the kindergarten year. Treatment groups were used on a classroom basis such that a separate treatment group was formed for each of the three schools. The group (school) using the visual-motor approach followed a program developed by Getman, et al. (1). They also received a basal reading series with supplemental language experience activities. The other two groups did not overtly subscribe to a visual-motor program; one program emphasized language experience with learning centers; the third group used informal readiness activities in addition to a basal reader approach (traditional group). See Lewy, et al. (4) for complete descriptions of the programs. Using the Slosson Intelligence Test scores as covariates, the long-term effects of the three programs were assessed. At the first and second grades, no significant differences were observed. However, in the third grade, the visual-motor group was significantly lower than the traditional group on both the reading and composite adjusted means. No significant adjusted means were observed with the language experience group and the visual-motor group. It appears that, in terms of the measures used in this study, the visual-motor program imparted no special advantage.