Answer Preference and Answer Conflict in Children's Completions of Concrete Operational Stories

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Abstract
The procedures used in presenting many concrete operational problems have two drawbacks: children may fail through misunderstanding the questioner's intention and there is a biasing towards a unidimensional interpretational of the question. Story completion procedures were used here in an effort to circumvent these problems. In the first experiment six and seven year‐old children had to select one of four completions of a story of traditional style and content. Selection of completions that involved the coordination of perceptual dimensions was associated with separately‐assessed ability in conservation and in class inclusion. This was interpreted as showing that success and failure on these standard tasks reflects answer preferences which are not specific to the procedures used in the tasks. The second experiment attempted to equalise the biasing towards the unidimensional answer in conservation tasks. The problem was presented through a narrative in which the answers of a nonconserving and of a conserving protagonist came into symmetrical conflict. Selection of the conservation completion by the four and five year‐old subjects was far more common than in the standard situation, suggesting that when the biasing is removed a more basic form of conservation competence is revealed.

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