Explain what Piaget's famous conservation tasks reveal about preoperational children's thinking

What will be an ideal response?

Answer: Conservation refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes. Piaget's famous conservation tasks reveal several deficiencies of preoperational thought. First, preoperational children's understanding is centered, or characterized by centration. They focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features. In the conservation of liquid task, the child centers on the height of the water, failing to realize that changes in width compensate for the changes in height. Second, children are easily distracted by the perceptual appearance of objects. Third, they treat the initial and final states of the water as unrelated events, ignoring the dynamic transformation (pouring of water) between them. The most important illogical feature of preoperational though is its irreversibility—an inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point. Reversibility is part of every logical operation.

Psychology

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By performing a further factor analysis on Thurstone's factors (called a second-order

factor analysis), Cattell showed a. that Thurstone's number of factors was correct. b. fewer factors than Spearman proposed. c. twice the number of factors that Spearman proposed. d. that performance on tests of intellectual ability had over a hundred factors. e. an eighth factor that he termed integration.

Psychology

Which of the following is NOT one of the types of truants identified by Bimler and Kirkland?

A) Unmotivated loners B) Well-socialized delinquents C) Motivated loners D) Truancy condoned by parents

Psychology