The Measurement of Time: Children's Construction of Transitivity,Unit Iteration,and Conservation of Speed

One hundred twenty children in kindergarten and grades 2, 4, and 6 were individually interviewed with five Piagetian tasks to determine the grade level at which most have constructed transitive reasoning, unit iteration, and the conservation of speed. The responses were categorized as “successful,”“unsuccessful,” or “transitional.” By combining the “successful” and “transitional” categories, it was found that the children reasoned transitively by second grade (70.0%) and demonstrated unit iteration and conservation of speed by sixth grade (70.0% and 83.3%, respectively). It was concluded that the construction of the logic necessary to make sense of the measurement of time is generally not complete before sixth grade.