IRICE   05408
INSTITUTO ROSARIO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACION
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Socioeconomic context influences young children’s understanding of pictures as symbols
Autor/es:
SALSA, ANALÍA M.; PERALTA, OLGA A.
Lugar:
Würzburg, Alemania
Reunión:
Congreso; 20th Biennial ISSBD Meeting; 2008
Institución organizadora:
International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD)
Resumen:
Pictures are the first type of symbolic object infants and young children must learn to master. In Western societies, most children encounter family photographs and picture books on a daily basis. Such interactions teach children the nature of pictorial images and their conventional functions and uses. Prior studies reveal that by 2 years of age children interpret pictures symbolically, relating a picture to what it depicts; however, there has not been systematic examination on whether the age of onset of this symbolic ability varies across different socioeconomic (SES) groups. The present experiment investigated socioeconomic differences on 2.5-, 3- and 3.5-year-old children’s understanding of photographs and representational drawings. A simple matching task with two conditions, photograph and drawing, was used. Both conditions had five choice trials in which children were asked to select which one of five boxes was the correct place to put an object the experimenter had dropped down a tunnel. Each box contained either a highly realistic color photograph or a black-and-white line drawing of one of the five objects constructed with balls and sticks. The results revealed a dramatic failure by low SES 2.5- and 3-year-old children to match the pictures with their appropriate objects in both photograph and drawing conditions, while 3.5-year-olds performed above chance. In contrast, already at 2.5 years of age middle SES children succeed. These findings are discussed in terms of how the socioeconomic context might affect the symbolic experiences that scaffold young children’s understanding and use of picture-referent relations.