Compensation and susceptibility to conservation training

Pretested 67 kindergartners for (a) conservation of discontinuous quantity; and (b) compensation of height-width dimensions, i.e., anticipation of the level of material transferred between containers of different widths. 27 Ss displayed compensation without conservation, whereas 1 S showed the reverse pattern. Ss lacking conservation were classified as compensators or noncompensators. Approximately 1/2 of each of these groups received conservation training; the other 1/2 received no training. Posttests indicate significant conservation gains among trained compensators relative to either untrained compensators or trained noncompensators. Among trained compensators, those who profited from training gave more explicit verbal justifications for their compensation answers in the pretest than compensators who did not profit from training. (22 ref.)