SPATIAL AND CONSERVATION CONCEPTS IN EDUCABLE MENTALLY RETARDED, NORMAL, AND BRIGHT CHILDRE

The study was conducted in order to determine if Educable Mentally Retarded, Normal, and Bright subjects matched according to a mental age of seven performed at similar levels on Piagetian tests of conservation and spatial concepts. The Piagetian tests utilized in this study were the Concept Assessment Kit-Conservation and the Haptic Perception of Space Test. The Haptic Perception of Space Test consisted of two sections: topological space and Euclidean space. The tests were administered individually to each subject.;The results indicated that the Educable Mentally Retarded, Normal, and Bright groups were not significantly different in their performance on the conservation test. Also, the groups varied in their performance on the individual conservation tasks, with their lowest conservation score being on the conservation of weight. This result was consistent with Piaget's findings in which he has shown that the conservation of weight is one of the last conservation concepts to be comprehended by the child. On the first part of the Haptic Perception of Space Test, topological space, the Educable Mentally Retarded group scored significantly lower than the Normal group. The second part of the Haptic Perception of Space Test, Euclidean space, revealed no significant differences in the scores obtained by the three groups.;The results of this study indicated that Educable Mentally Retarded, Normal and Bright groups matched according to mental age generally demonstrated comparable levels of performance on Piagetian tests of conservation and space. Within each group there was individual variation in performance but the average performance for the three groups was comparable.