Extinction of Liquid Conservation by Modeling: Three Indicators of Its Artificiality

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Abstract
In order to assess the authenticity of the extinction of liquid quantity conservation induced by social pressure, conservers observed the live modeling of nonconservation. The model contradicted the conservers'' pretest answers in both an opinion and an operant task designed to allow evaluation of the model''s ascendancy. The children were retested in the model''s presence or absence. The posttest included items measuring generalization of extinction to nonmodeled conservation problems. For both the conservation and the operant task, extinction occurred only in the model''s presence, whereas in the latter''s absence some extinction was also observed in the opinion task. Generalization was found only on items closely similar to the modeled conservation task. Regression on 1 of the generalization tasks was related to the degree of adoption of the model''s opinions and operant errors. The obtained extinction may be artificial, since regression was placed under social control while immediate generalization was restricted and associated with submissiveness to social influence.

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