Conservation (psychology)

Conservation (psychology)

Conservation refers to a logical thinking ability which, according to the psychologist Jean Piaget becomes evident in children aged 7–12 during the concrete operations stage of their development. It is part of Piaget's theory of cognitive development, to logically determine that a certain quantity will remain the same despite adjustment of the container, shape, or apparent size.

Conservation Tasks test a child’s ability to see that some properties are conserved or invariant after an object undergoes physical transformation, such as a row of coins being stretched out, or a spherical lump of clay being rolled into a tube. Conservation itself is defined as: the ability to keep in mind what stays the same and what changes in an object after it has changed aesthetically. One who can conserve is able to reverse the transformation mentally and understand compensation.

Piaget’s most famous Conservation Task (there are many others e.g. conservation of substance, weight, number etc.) involved showing a child two beakers, both of which were identical and which contained the same amount of coloured (typically blue) liquid. The child was asked whether the two beakers had the same amount of liquid in both. Then liquid from one of the glasses was poured into a taller, thinner glass. The child was then asked whether there was still the same amount of liquid in both glasses. A child who cannot conserve would answer "No, there is more in the tall thin glass".

Piaget furthered the conclusion to suggest that this confusion was born from a pre-operational child’s inability to understand the notion of reversibility; the ability to see the reversal of a physical transformation as well as the transformation itself. These ideas were used to create the ‘Principle of Invariance’.