Abstract
Sixty first-graders responded to four traditional weight conservation tasks and 24 randomly sequenced weight conservation tasks in which the transformations were based on 24 attributes of a doll. Some of these attributes were connotations of weight and some were not. Transformations of attributes that were connotations produced significantly more nonconservation than transformations of those that were not. The direction of non-conservation, i.e., heavier or lighter, was significantly related to whether the attribute was linguistically marked or unmarked.
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Murray, F.B., Markessini, J. A Semantic Basis of Nonconservation of Weight. Psychol Rec 32, 375–379 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394796
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394796