Sameul and Bryant

Question 1

1. From the study of Samuel and Bryant on conservation, identify four factors that affect a child’s ability to conserve. (4)

Answer 1

Four factors that affect a child ability to conserve are: 
•	Age
•	Material 
•	Condition 
•	Cognitive ability/teaching methods

Question 2

2. Samuel and Bryant’s study on conservation had three conditions. Briefly describe two of these conditions. (4)

Answer 2

Any two from the following three conditions:
• Condition 1: standard condition – these children were given the traditional conservation task where they were asked two questions.
• Condition 2: one judgement condition – these children were asked only one question, after the display was changed i.e. post transformation.
• Condition 3: Fixed array condition – this group only saw one display, the post-transformation one; that is they were just shown the post-transformation display and asked whether the two were the same mass/number/volume.

Question 3

3. Samuel and Bryant’s study involved conducting interviews with children.
   a) Describe one problem that psychologists have to consider when they interview children. (2)

b) Suggest how psychologists might deal with this problem. (2)

Answer 3

• Psychologists have to make sure that they do not repeat a question twice because this may make the children think that their initial response was incorrect and the interviewer wants an alternative answer for their second response.
• Psychologists can deal with this problem by ensuring that they do not repeat a question twice and secondly giving children some space, silence and time to think before they respond to any question.

Question 4

4. Outline two conclusions that can be drawn from Samuel and Bryant’s study into conservation. (4)

Answer 4

• Failure on the traditional two-question conservation task may be at least partly due to being asked two questions rather because they cannot conserve.
• Unlike Piaget, Samuel and Bryant conclude that children under the age of 7 can also conserve.
• Samuel and Bryant conclude like Piaget that children conserve number before they conserve mass and volume.

Question 5

5. Samuel and Bryant’s study considered the validity of Piaget’s methods of assessing conservation.
   a) Explain what the term validity means. (2)

b) Outline one difference between the method used by Piaget and the method used by Samuel and Bryant. (2)

Answer 5

• Validity refers to the accuracy of a measure. If a tool measures what it has been designed to measure then it is valid i.e. it measuring what it intended to measure.
• One difference is that Samuel and Bryant’s method has 3 conditions which include the standard, one judgement and fixed-array. Whereas Piaget’s method just has the standard condition where they asked both the pre-transformation and post-transformation question.

Question 6

6. From Samuel and Bryant’s study on conservation, give one piece of evidence that supports Piaget’s claims and one piece of evidence that challenges Piaget’s claim about children’s ability to conserve. (4)

Answer 6

• One piece of evidence that supports Piaget’s claims is that children made few errors on the number task compared with the other two tasks.
• One piece of evidence that challenges Piaget’s claim about children’s ability to conserve is that children made the fewest errors when shown the transformation and asked only one question in the one judgement condition.

Question 7

7. Outline one way the results from the study by Samuel and Bryant show that cognitive development has taken place. (2)

Answer 7

• The results show that cognitive development has taken place because there was a significant difference between the age groups, with older groups doing consistently better than the younger. Or
• The results show that cognitive development has taken place because the children must have been using their knowledge of conservation when they solved the one-question task. Or
• The results show that cognitive development has taken place because the children must of used their knowledge of the pre-transformation display to conserve because they all did much better than the fixed-array control group.