Multiple Factors in Early Symbol Use: Instructions, Similarity, and Age in Understanding a Symbol-Referent Relation

DELOACHE, J., PERALTA, O. Y ANDERSON, K.

Cognitive Development

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC

Lugar: Londres, UK; Año: 1999 p. 299 - 312

0885-2014

Although young children begin to master a number of symbol systems in the first years of life, they need substantial social support to do so. Specifically, to detect a novel symbol-referent relation, young children may need very extensive, explicit information about the existence and nature of the relation. The three studies reported here show the importance of instructions for young children’s use of a scale model as a source of information about a larger space. These results, in combination with prior research, demonstrate that instructions interact with other variables, including age and physical similarity; 5- to 7-year-old children can detect the model–room relation with no instructions at all, 4-year-olds can succeed with less complete instructions than 3- or 3-1/2-year-olds require, and 3-year-olds can get by with minimal instructions if the two spaces are made more similar to one another. This demonstration of the joint influence of multiple factors highlights the complexity of early symbol understanding and use. Some implications of these studies for the instructional use of symbolic objects are discussed.