Several studies have shown that the elderly do not perform well on the Piagetian problems of logical thinking; the present set of studies aimed at demonstrating that the elderly maintain the competence to solve such problems. The first study performed by the authors assessed performance of 60 noninstitutionalized middle-class elderly females on area and volume conservation tasks. On overall performance only 33.3 percent of the subjects were classified as conservers. The second study employed a training paradigm to determine whether simple verbal feedback activated the strategies required for adequate performance on conservation tasks. Twenty-two subjects who failed to conserve in the assessment study were administered a 20-trial training procedure. Half of these subjects received no feedback. An immediate posttest indicated that the feedback group performed significantly better than the control group on the near transfer posttest task and on the five out of six far transfer tasks. The authors argue that the ease with which training effects were established and the improved performance after training support the view that the elderly maintain competence to adequately solve problems of logical thinking. (Author/SE)

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