Piaget’s Conservation Tasks

Piaget’s Conservation Tasks are experiments designed to test whether children understand that quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance. For example, children may see a liquid poured into different-shaped glasses; older children recognize the amount stays the same, while younger children might think the taller glass has more. These tasks help identify a child's stage of cognitive development, particularly their ability to see that certain properties, like volume or number, are conserved despite superficial changes. They illustrate how children's reasoning about quantity develops as they grow older.