The Child's Understanding of Correspondence Relations

A number of quantitative comparison tasks were designed to tap knowledge of injective and surjective correspondences, one-directional compositions (greater + greater yields greater), countervailing compositions (greater + lesser yields ?), and length-density relations in 4- to 7-year-olds. The results indicated that performance on the comparison tasks was related to performance on a number conservation test as well as to age. Nonconservers performed at better than chance levels on tasks that tapped an elementary knowledge of injective and surjective correspondences; concrete-operational children, however, tended perform better on all tasks. Uncorrected and disattenuated correlation coefficients revealed considerable consistency across measures. Factor analyses, with and without age included, yielded a unitary factor. An explanation of the results based on perceptual salience was ruled out.