Early understanding of pictorial representations: The role of socioeconomic context

SALSA, ANALÍA M.; PERALTA, OLGA A.

Denver, Colorado, Estados Unidos

Congreso; 2009 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development; 2009

Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

The present research examined 2.5- to 3.5-year-old children’s understanding of photographs and drawings in two socioeconomic (SES) groups--low-SES and middle-SES. The results revealed a dramatic failure by low-SES 2.5-year-old children to match the pictures with their appropriate objects in both photograph and drawing conditions, while middle-SES 2.5-year-olds were quite successful in both conditions. The performance of low-SES 3-year-old children was much better with more iconic than with less iconic pictures. They performed above chance with photographs but at chance with line drawings; the greater iconicity of photographs probably improved performance. In the drawing condition, low-SES children succeeded at 3.5 years of age, a whole year after the middle-SES group did. The results of this research expand our understanding of the emergence of pictorial symbolism showing an interaction between social factors and iconicity in the performance of very young children.