After stringing beads from a large necklace onto a smaller empty string, a child states that there are now more beads on the small string than there were on the larger string. What cognitive concept (Piaget's theory) does this behaviour best illustrate?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This behaviour best illustrates the lack of understanding of conservation, which is the concept that the amount of a substance remains the same even when its shape or container changes. The child may have assimilated the beads onto the smaller string but did not conserve the total amount of beads from the larger string. Accommodation is the process of adjusting existing schemas to incorporate new information, and equilibration refers to the balance between assimilation and accommodation. However, neither of these concepts accurately describes the behaviour exhibited by the child in this scenario.

After Stringing Beads from a Large Necklace onto a Smaller