Contextual factors in early comprehension and production of pictures

SALSA, ANALIA M.; PERALTA, OLGA A.

San Antonio, Texas

Congreso; VI Biennial Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society; 2009

Cognitive Development Society (CDS)

A wide variety of sociocultural practices organizes children’s knowledge and constrains symbolic development. This research investigates age-related and socioeconomic differences in pictorial competence. Middle and low SES children from 30 to 60 months were assessed for their pictorial comprehension (own and the experimenter’s drawings) and production (free and model drawing). Middle SES children comprehended experimenter’s drawings at 30 months; at 42, when children produced representational drawings in the model task, they also understood their own drawings; at 48 months children succeeded in all tasks. In low SES children pictorial comprehension and production appear later: at 42 months children understood the experimenter’s drawings; at 60 they passed both comprehension tasks, but their production was representational only in the model task. Low SES children were also assessed for their comprehension of photographs. Results show that these children used photographs symbolically earlier than drawings, at 36 months, probably due to iconicity.