Abstract
The magic paradigm was used to examine preschoolers’ abilities to make judgments requiring a number-related invariance concept. Findings from previous, similar studies have suggested number invariance schemes in 3- and 4-year-olds. The stimuli in those investigations, however, contained a redundancy of number and relative numerosity. When these dimensions were separated in the present study, fewer children exhibited conservation-like performance than in the redundant-cue task and, contrary to previous findings, most did not justify their responses with reference to number. The results were consistent with the suggestion that preschoolers do make use of invariance concepts in the magic paradigm, but that these need not always represent number invariance per se.
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This research was supported in part by a grant to the first author from the Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the children and teachers of the Little Red Schoolhouse, Kiddieland Daycare, and the Infant Care Center and Nursery School of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their cooperation. We also thank Rochel Gelman and Linda Siegel for their many halpful comments on earlier descriptions of this research.
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Marschark, M., Greenberg, N.A. & Clark, M.D. Dimensions of number invariance. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 21, 108–110 (1983). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329967
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329967