Conceptions of weight: A developmental stud

This dissertation concerned an analysis of responses to a modification of Piaget's classic test of weight conservation. Concepts of certainty and necessity were challenged by investigating subjects' responses to misleading questions, questions which proffered two illogical choices such as, "When do you weigh more, when you are bent in half or straight?" This question form was applied to conservation of weight tests using clay balls. Research indicated that many subjects readily responded to such questions with conservation errors and nonconservation justifications as well.;This apparent lack of certainty on conservation tests was interpreted from three perspectives. Simple-minded acquiescence was ruled out because subjects often rejected misleading clay-referent questions while subsequently succumbing to misleading body-referent questions. Two other explanations were found to be more difficult to distinguish.;Grice's theory of linguistic pragmatics states that subjects respond to a communication based on its context and the intention of the speaker. My subjects could have been reinterpreting misleading questions to mean something like, "When does my body weight feel heavier ... ?" The other explanation was based on Werner's theory which allowed for regression in thinking under certain primitivizing conditions. Under conditions of uncertainty, fatigue or stress subjects presumably respond with less than logical responding, at least temporarily.;An expected gradient of conservation success was predicted based on conditions involving various types of scales, tests of equivalence and identity, as well as varying degrees of association to one's body. Results indicated few significant effects. College students but not children responded with more conservation errors to misleading questions while holding the clay versus not holding the clay and evidenced fewer errors to an equivalence/scale/clay-referent condition in comparison to an identity/no scale/body-referent condition. It is possible that my tests weren't sensitive enough to the hypothesized gradient of conservation success because related research indicated that adults as well as children often demonstrated problems with number conservation under certain conditions.