Alright. So Jake is a 3-year-old doing a task in a psychology lab. The research assistant shows him 2 identical balls of clay and asks him which one is larger or if they are the same. They then squish one of the balls flat and ask him the same question. Based on Piaget's pre-operational stage, how would you expect Jake to answer each question?

What is being described here is a pretty classic conservation task, and so we know, at this age, if we are showing Jake 2 identical balls of clay, he can probably identify that they are the same size pretty easily. So most kids get that part of the task correct. But then if we were to change the appearance of one of those balls of clay by squishing it flat and ask him the same question, "Does this one have more, does this one have more, or are they the same?" It is very likely that Jake would get tricked by this change in the physical appearance. So there's a good chance that he would say, "Oh, you know, these are different," and he might point, for example, to that fully intact ball of clay and say, "This one has more."

Because of Jake's responses, we would know he has not yet developed the skill of conservation. Essentially, he cannot understand that the physical properties of these objects remain the same even if their appearance changes. Alright, so there we have it, and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye bye.