Comment on Anderson and Cuneo's "The height + width rule in children's judgments of quantity."

The validity of the height + width rule for judgment of area, as proposed by N. H. Anderson and D. O. Cuneo , is questioned on statistical-methodological grounds. A detailed consideration of rating scale methodology as employed in functional measurement indicates that there are intimate relationships among the stimulus set, rating scale, stimulus end anchors, rating-scale-response variability, and sample size that determine the sensitivity or power of a particular factorial design to reveal the form of the integration rule. Anderson and Cueno's positions on the concepts of conservation, centration, and compensation are also considered. (6 ref)