Piaget’s Conservation
Theory & Autism
Breana McCormack
Child Growth & Development
Jean Piaget
http://childpsych.umwblogs.org/develo
pmental-theories/jean-piaget/
• Born in 1896 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland
• Died in 1980
• Studied at the University of Neuchâtel and
briefly at University of Zurich.
• At the age of 15, he published several articles
on mollusks based on his interest in biology.
• Piaget faced an intellectual crisis realizing that
his religious and philosophical views lacked a
scientific background.
• Planned to study the origin of knowledge
through the mind’s development in child
psychology.
• Developed his own “genetic epistemology.”
• 1920, Binet Laboratory; became interested in
children’s wrong answers in standardized
intelligence tests.
Piaget’s Stage Theory
 Sensorimotor Intelligence (Birth – 2 years)
 Babies show first signs of intelligence through their physical
actions and sensory perceptions.
 Schemes – actions for dealing with the environment
 Primary Circular Reactions – organization of two separate body
movements, schemes.
 Thought begins
 Preoperational Thought (2 – 7 years)
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Children learn to think using symbols and images.
Thinking is unsystematically illogical.
Make Believe Play
Animism – inanimate objects are personified.
Conservation
Piaget’s Stage Theory
 Concrete Operations (7 – 11 years)
 Children think systematically but need to refer to concrete
objects and activities.
 Child achieves this level of thinking after mastering
conservation.
 Formal Operations (11 – Adulthood)
 Young people develop the capacity to think systematically
on a purely abstract level.
Bruno Bettelheim
 Born in 1903 in Vienna, Austria.
 Died in 1990
 Grew up with an interest in
psychoanalysis.
 In 1932, he and his wife began caring for a
girl later diagnosed with autism.
 From 1938 to 1939, he was a prisoner in
the concentration camps of Dachau and
Buchenwald during the time of Hitler.
 Entered the U.S in 1944 and took over the
Orthogenic School in Chicago working
with and sheltering children with a variety
of mental disorders.
http://www.phillwebb.net/History/Twentieth/Continental/
Psychoanalysis/Bettelheim/Bettelheim.htm
Bettelheim on Autism
 At the time, autism was a mysterious condition in which
children are unresponsive to people.
 Autism is the earliest of severe personality
disturbances, typically showing up around age 2.
 Bettelheim suggests that autism is caused by children
giving up their autonomous actions because their
actions received indifference.
Terms That Guided This
Research
 Autism
 [T]he presence of a distinctive impairment in the
nature and quality of social and communicative
development.... It is this impairment that
distinguishes autism from other
neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g.., mental
retardation, developmental language disorders,
specific learning disabilities).”
(Autism Identification, Education, and Treatment, Zager)
Terms That Guided This
Research
 Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
 Conservation
 The comprehension that an object that has changed
aesthetically still has the same quantity.
 Substage 1
 Child clearly fails to conserve, fails to realize that the quantity
is the same.
 Substage 2
 Child takes a step toward conservation but does not achieve
it.
 A child “considers two dimensions simultaneously and
recognizes that a change in one dimension cancels out a
change in the other.”
(Theories of Development, Crain)
Terms That Guided This
Research
 Concrete Operations (7 – 11 years)
 When children achieve conservation, they are entering this
stage.
 They demonstrate conservation using three arguments:
 Identity – Nothing was added or taken away.
 Compensation – The changes cancel out each other.
 The child assumes that the changes are part of an organized system
(a change in one dimension is related to a change in another
dimension).
 Inversion – The object after undergoing a change can be
reversed back into it’s original state.
 Logical Operations – mental actions that are reversible.
Research Questions
 Do autistic children follow Piaget’s Conservation
Theory in accordance to their age groups?
 Are there patterns of differences among conserving
autistic children with respect to conserving normally
developed children?
Hypothesis
 Yes, autistic children will follow Piaget’s Conservation
Theory in accordance to their age groups.
 No, autistic children will have the same conserving
patterns as normally functioning children.
Setting
 The study took place the
researcher’s home in San Juan,
TX.
 A table setting with two chairs.
 Study took place in one day.
Limitations
 Researcher had access to only four children:
 2 Autistic Children
 1 Male (5 years old)
 1 Female (17 years old)
 2 Normally Functioning Children
 1 Female (7 years old)
 1 Female (9 years old)
 Varying Ages
Procedure
Task 1: Number Conservation
1.
Take 16 pennies and make two rows, 8 in each row and with the same length. Count together how
many pennies there are in each row.
2.
Ask the child, “Is there more here (point to one row) or here (point to other row)?” “Why do you think
so?”
3.
Spread out one row of the pennies so that one row is physically longer than the other.
4.
Ask the child, “Is there more pennies here (point to longer row) or here (point to shorter), or are they
the same?” Record the child’s response. Then ask, “Why do you think so?”
Note: Record the child’s answers.
http://piagets.wikispaces.com/Piagets+theory
Procedure
Task 2: Mass Conservation
1.
Take a piece of clay and divide it as equally as possible.
2.
Have child roll the pieces into two balls and then ask the child if they are the same.
Note: If
the child agrees that they are the same, proceed. If child disagrees, ask the
child to make them
the same.
3.
Have child squish one of the balls into a pancake. Ask the child, “Is there the same amount of clay in
this one (pointing to the ball) as there is in this one (pointing to the pancake)?”
4.
After their response, ask, “Why do you think that this one has more,” or, “Why do you think that they
have the same amount of clay?”
5.
Record all responses exactly as the child has reported them.
Procedure
Task 3 : Volume Conservation
1.
Put two glasses of the same size in front of the child. Ask child to pour equal amounts of water into
both cups.
2.
Ask student to verify that there is the same amount of water in each glass by asking, “Are you sure
that there is the same amount of water in each glass? Positive?”
Note: Only move onto next step once child verifies the cups have the same amount of water.
3.
Ask the student to pour water from one of the glasses into an empty “different” glass.
4.
Wait for child to complete pouring, then ask, “Now which one has more?” ”Why?”
Note: Record child’s answers on a data sheet.
Data
Task 1: Number Conservation
 “They are still the same. It’s still a group of eight.” (7 year
old, female)
 Said they are the same because “you just spread them
out.”(9 year old, female)
 Said the spread out line of pennies had more “because it
has more. It’s longer.” (5 year old, male, autistic)
 “They both have same amount I guess, they are worth the
same.” (17 year old, female, autistic)
Data
Task 2: Mass Conservation
 “Yes, all you did was smush one down. You didn’t take any
away.” (7 year old, female)
 “Yes, still have same amount but one is a sphere and one is
flat.” (9 year old, female)
 The ball has more “because it’s a ball.” (5 year old, male,
autistic)
 “The amount of them doesn’t change if you change the
shape.” “This one is flat but we didn’t take any away.” (17
year old, female, autistic)
Data
Task 3: Volume Conservation
 “Yes both are the same. I poured the same water from the tall
skinny one to the small fat one.” (7 year old, female)
 “Yes, they have the same amount of water because the water from
this cup (points at bigger cup) was poured into this little cup. So it’s
the same amount.” (9 year old, female)
 “Bigger cup has more water because the little cup is little.” (5 year
old, male, autistic)
 “Technically they’re both the same. Because even though this one
(points at little cup) is small and all, [but] it’s wider.” (17 year old,
female, autistic)
Results
Findings
 Child 1: According to Piaget, Child 1 clearly was able to conserve.
She did not hesitate in her answers. She is within the age range of
Concrete Operations stage.
 Child 2: According to Piaget, Child 2 was clearly able to conserve.
She did not hesitate in her answers. She within the age range of the
Concrete Operations stage.
 Child 3a: According to Piaget, Child 3a was not able to conserve.
According to Piaget, a child is around 7 years old when he is able to
conserve. Child 3a is in the Preoperational stage.
 Child 4a: According to Piaget, Child 4a was able to conserve. Her age
is beyond the Concrete Operational stage, but her development
period cannot be determined simply by only a conservation
experiment. Since Piaget did not stress the importance on age, I
cannot place her in the Formal Operations stage without further
investigation.
Implications
 My Hypothesis was correct.
 Piaget states that children around age 7 are able to
conserve.
 Child 3a (5 years old) was not able to conserve, following
Piaget’s age limit.
 Child 3a used similar logic as other children from other
research studies that could not conserve.
 Child 4a (17 years old) used two of the three conservation
arguments, showing that her patterns matched with those
that can conserve.
New Questions
1. Where would a 7 year old autistic child stand in the
midst of the Development stages?
2. Since there are many levels of autism (ranging from
severe to mild), how would both cases perform in the
conservation tasks?
Evaluations
If I were to do my research study again:
 I would use more children, specifically more autistic children.
 Test more children around the same ages and according to
Piaget’s age range for the Preoperational and Concrete
Operational Stages.
 I would record with a recorder the study, for clearer data.
 A limitation I encountered was that one of the autistic
children had difficulty conveying what she was trying to
express.
References

Bettelheim, Bruno. "Mutuality." The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self. New York: Free Press, 1967. 31. Print.

"BRUNO BETTELHEIM." PHILWEB HOME. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2013. <http://www.phillwebb.net/History/Twentie

Crain, William C. "Piaget's Cognitive-Developmental Theory." Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications. 6 ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980.
118-156. Print.

Crawford, Tracy. “Does Working with Sets Contribute to Conservation of Number for Young Children?” A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Education
Saint Mary’s College of California. © 2008. Research Study. Database: ERIC. 2008.

Piaget, Jean, and Bärbel Inhelder. The Child's Conception of Space. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967. Print.

"Piagets theory." Piaget's Developmental Stage Theory. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2013. <piagets.wikispaces.com/Piagets+theory >.

Tilton, Adelle Jameson. The Everything Parents Guide to Children with Autism: Know what to expect, find the help you need, and get through the day. Avon, Mass.:
Adams Media, 2004. Print.

Truslow, Chasity. "Jean Piaget | Changes in Child Psychology." Changes in Child Psychology | Anam Habib, Chasity Truslow, Chelsea Harmon & Georgia Karellas.
N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2013. <http://childpsych.umwblogs.org/developmental-theories/jean-piaget/>.

Sigman, Marian, and Judy A. Ungerer. "Cognitive And Language Skills In Autistic, Mentally Retarded, And Normal Children." Developmental Psychology 20.2 (1984):
293-302. PrintResearch Study. Database: ERIC. 2008.

Zager, Dianne. Autism Identification, Education, and Treatment. 2nd ed. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. Print.

Zelan, Karen. "Bruno Bettleheim." Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education. 1993. Reprint. Paris: ©UNESCO: International Bureau of Education,
2000.
85-100. Print.