Samuel and Bryant's study is greatly based on the work of Piaget. Piaget was a originally a Swiss zoologist. His work eventually broadened to include children. He was interested in the way children make mistakes. Piaget believed that there are four stages of development that children go through (the sensori-motor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage). One of the features of development that Piaget was curious about was conservation (the ability to understand that characteristics like mass, volume, or quantity can remain the same despite changes in appearance). In order to see whether children were able to conserve Piaget conducted an experiment. Part of the experiment involved showing children the same amount of liquid in identical beakers and ask if there was the same amount of liquid in each beaker. He would then pour the liquid of one of the beakers into a shorter, fatter beaker and ask of the amount of liquid was the same. Correctly answering the question would show understanding of conservation. He concluded that children in the pre-operational stage are unable to conserve.

Some critics including Samuel and Bryant have stated that Piaget's study did not actually measure children's' ability to conserve. It has been stated that as Piaget's study involved asking children the same question about the same thing twice makes them think that their original question was incorrect. In order to see whether it was asking the same question twice that gave Piaget his results Samuel and Bryant re-did his experiment.

The sample consisted of 252 boys and girls. They were divided into 4 age groups (5, 6, 7 and 8). Unlike Piaget's study, Samuel and Bryant's study divided the children into 3 different conditions. One condition was asked about the quantities before and after the transformation, one condition was asked only the post-transformation question and the other condition was not shown the transformation and then asked the post-transformation question.

The children who were asked the same question twice were more likely to answer the post-transformation question incorrectly. This supports the theory the Piaget underestimated the children's ability to conserve.

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