Cognitive Styles in Children and Performance on Piagetian Conservation Tasks

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Abstract
An investigation of the relationship of field-independence-dependence and verbal mediation-nonmediation to Piagetian conservation behavior in 88 kindergarten, first, and second grade boys. It was hypothesized that the field-independent and the verbally mediating boys will have grasped the principle of conservation to a significantly greater degree than field-dependent and nonmediating boys. The Children's Embedded-figures Test and a reversal-nonreversal shift task were administered in order to categorize the boys on the two main effect dimensions of field independence-dependence and verbal mediation-nonmediation. The Concept Assessment Kit-Conservation was administered to measure the ability of each boy to conserve. The procedure resulted in a three-way irregular analysis of variance design. The main effect of field independence was significant as hypothesized ( p < .05). Grade was also significant ( p < .01), but neither the verbal mediation main effect nor any of the interactions was.

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