摘要：Classic developmental studies have established that children’s number conservation is often biased by misleading intuitions. However, the precise nature of these conservation errors is not clear. A key question is whether children detect that their erroneous conservation judgment is unwarranted. The present study focuses on this critical error sensitivity issue. Preschool children were given a classic version of a number conservation task in which an intuitively cued response conflicted with the correct conservation response and a control version in which this conflict was not present. After solving each version children were asked to indicate their response confidence. Results showed that in contrast with children who gave a correct conservation response, preschoolers who erred showed a sharp confidence decrease after solving the classic conflict problem. This suggests that nonconserving preschoolers detect that their response is questionable and are less ignorant about conservation than their well-documented errors might have previously suggested.
