REPRESENTATION AND REASONING IN EARLY NUMERICAL DEVELOPMENT - COUNTING, CONSERVATION, AND COMPARISONS BETWEEN SEES

The first experiment examined the developmental relation between count ing and number conservation in the 3-6-year-old age range. Results ind icated extended developments in both children's counting and their con servation reasoning, and a close relation between the 2. Only the olde st children gave evidence of conserving, and they also differentiated appropriately between conservation and control problems in their use o f counting. The second and third experiments extended the finding that children below 6 years of age do not conserve to conditions in which counting was precluded. These results provide evidence of protracted d evelopments in young children's understanding of relational aspects of number.