This study examined the criteria used by 138 Zambian children in their responses to Furth's non-verbal weight conservation test via posttest interviews. Thirty seven and seven tenths percent of the children responded by weight, 29% by size, 4.4% by size and weight, and 1.4% by size and shape. Others either did not respond at all or gave other nonrelevant responses. Of the conservers, 46% responded by weight while 53% responded by nonweight criteria. The remaining 1% gave nonrelevant responses. All were expected to respond by weight alone. These results raise some doubt about the validity of evidence for weight conservation among African children, based on Furth's non-verbal technique. To improve communication of the weight concept, it is recommended that this test be modified to include a pretraining in size-weight discrimination. A major obstacle to the effective use of the clinical method, by the non-indigenous, for the study of cognitive processes in Third World environment is the problem of verbal communication, so attempts are made to use non-verbal methods. One such attempt was made by Heron and Simonsson (3) who used Furth's non-verbal conservation test to study weight conservation by Zambian children. Furth (2) developed this technique for studying weight conservation of deaf children. It involves essentially three stages. The first requires practice with weights of different sizes. Second, there is practice with obviously equal and obviously unequal balls of plasticine. The third stage is the test. The two practice stages were to ensure that the children had fully understood that same weight was indicated by a horizontal movement of both hands simultaneously and that a judgment of heavier must be communicated by allowing the hand to fall sharply on the table.
BMI, Weight Discrimination, and the Trajectory of Distress and Well‐Being Across the Coronavirus Pandemic