Cognitive synthesis, conservation, and task analysis

Tested alternative explanations for previous findings that: (a) young children cannot synthesize in a pseudoreading task because of neurological immaturity, and (b) the positive relationship between conservation and synthesis performance is found because the same mental operations are required. Ss were white nursery school and 1st grade children. It was found that training for or altering the set resulted in Ss performing significantly better than controls subjected to the original procedures. It was shown that several sentences used had ambiguous meanings for all groups including 1 in which the sentences were presented orally. It was found that Ss trained to perform correctly on the synthesis task did not do significantly better on conservation and when Ss were equated on reading training no significant differences were observed between conservers and nonconservers on synthesis performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).