Conservation developmental process in early childhood: Impact of intrinsic motivation and practice effects
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Conservation developmental process in early childhood: Impact of intrinsic motivation and practice effects Nobuki Watanabe 1 Accepted: 20 November 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Conservation is a logical thinking ability to determine whether the quantity of goods is the same even if their shape changes. Children’s acquisition of conservation is measured by a Piagetian task, which is considered a difficult cognitive task for children below the age of 6 years. However, recently, accelerated cognitive development has been found from the viewpoint of epigenetics. Its cognitive development process is not well studied at present. Based on previous studies in pedagogy and psychology, we hypothesize cognitive development will be further enhanced by a practice effect and an intrinsic motivation. Therefore, we conducted a Piagetian task (length, number, and liquid) with young children in a national kindergarten for one year as an exploratory case study. The task was including intrinsic motivation and conducted five times. The results showed that there is a possibility of acquisition with behavioral evidence at around 5–6 years old. Furthermore, this behavioral evidence could show a part of the relation with executive function. The findings contribute to the study of cognitive development in psychology. Moreover, it will contribute to child support and its research in kindergartens and homes. Although the dataset was small, the results are sufficient as a general model of Japan. Keywords Conservation . Practice effects . Intrinsic motivation . Executive functions . Piagetian task
Introduction Conservation and its Acquisition Conservation is a logical thinking ability that can enable children to understand that certain properties of an object are preserved even if its appearance is transformed (Goswami 1998; Siegler 1986). For example, the conservation of number, length, and liquid has been investigated using the Piagetian task (standard task) (Ginsburg and Opper 1969; Goswami 1998; Hetherington and Parke 2003; Pastorino and Doyle-Portillo 2013; Piaget 1952; Siegler et al. 2003). These general acquisition stages are difficult to master before the age of 6 years (Field 1987; Goswami 1998; Houdé et al. 2011; Poirel et al. 2012). Moreover, an additional examination indicated that devising the task from a pragmatic viewpoint could accelerate acquisition (Light et al. 1979; McGarrigle and Donaldson 1974), with studies suggesting that this has
* Nobuki Watanabe [email protected] 1
School of Education, Kwansei Gakuin University, 7-54, Okadayama, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 662-0827, Japan
educational effects (Brainerd 1974; Bucher and Schneider 1973; Denney et al. 1977; Gelman 1969). As illustrated in studies like these, research on conservation has been around for a considerable period, and a lot of knowledge has been gained. The point is that the acquisition stage is known, and with teaching, acquisition can be enhanced. Conversely, without teaching, knowledge acquisition is diffic
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