Abstract
3 groups of children (64 urban French-Canadians, 62 rural schooled Rwandese, 64 rural unschooled Rwandese) were tested on their conservation and perception of length in order to determine whether Piaget's (1969) interpretation of the relation between the two tasks might be generalized to children differing in ethnic origin, urbanization, and schooling The results did not confirm Piaget's main findings on the importance of the upper protruding line and on the superiority of preoperational over operational children in the perceptual estimation of length. In spite of wide difference between the three groups on the perceptual task (overestimation of the variable line by French-Canadians, overestimation of the standard by schooled Rwandese, no systematic error in unschooled Rwandese) and on the conceptual task (operational level attained first by French-Canadians, then by schooled Rwandese and finally by unschooled Rwandese), the perception of length was not decisively influenced by the protrusion of the upper line and was significantly better for operational than for preoperational children for all three groups.
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