The representational functioning of young children will be studied. The focus of the research will be the recognition and exploitation of correspondence--realizing that two objects or situations are related in some way and then using what is known about one of them to understand the other. The project will be especially concerned with symbolic representation, a type of correspondence that is uniquely human and that forms the basis for a substantial portion of human learning. Most of the proposed studies involve young children's understanding of the representational or symbolic role of scale models, i.e., with their awareness that a model represents or stands for a larger space and that anything known or learned about the model can be applied to that larger space. A Model is presented of young children's understanding of scale models, and the proposed experiments test predictions based it. The studies address four areas of interest. (1) One set of experiments will evaluate the """"""""dual orientation"""""""" hypothesis--the suggestion that young children's difficulty with understanding and using scale models stems from the need to treat a model both as a real object and as a representation of something else. (2) A second group of experiments will examine factors hypothesized by the Model to be important in young children's understanding of models. Specific hypotheses will be tested regarding the effect of experience with other symbolic media, the role of physical similarity between a model and the space it represents, and the interaction among these and other variables. (3) Another set of studies will extend the research with scale models to other related domains-picture perception and symbolic play. (4) Developmental implications of the previous research with 2- and 3-year-olds will be examined in studies with older preschool children. The proposed research should enhance our knowledge of early cognitive development. In particular, we should learn more about the early development of symbolization, especially the development of the very important ability to learn or acquire new information via a symbolic medium.
| Tare, Medha; Chiong, Cynthia; Ganea, Patricia et al. (2010) Less is More: How manipulative features affect children's learning from picture books. J Appl Dev Psychol 31:395-400 |
| DeLoache, Judy S; Chiong, Cynthia; Sherman, Kathleen et al. (2010) Do babies learn from baby media? Psychol Sci 21:1570-4 |
| Deloache, Judy S; Lobue, Vanessa (2009) The narrow fellow in the grass: human infants associate snakes and fear. Dev Sci 12:201-7 |
| Ganea, Patricia A; Allen, Melissa L; Butler, Lucas et al. (2009) Toddlers' referential understanding of pictures. J Exp Child Psychol 104:283-95 |
| Troseth, Georgene L; Bloom Pickard, Megan E; DeLoache, Judy S (2007) Young children's use of scale models: testing an alternative to representational insight. Dev Sci 10:763-9 |
| Ganea, Patricia A; Shutts, Kristin; Spelke, Elizabeth S et al. (2007) Thinking of things unseen: infants'use of language to update mental representations. Psychol Sci 18:734-9 |
| Ware, Elizabeth A; Uttal, David H; Wetter, Emily K et al. (2006) Young children make scale errors when playing with dolls. Dev Sci 9:40-5 |
| Troseth, Georgene L; Pierroutsakos, Sophia L; DeLoache, Judy S (2004) From the innocent to the intelligent eye: the early development of pictorial competence. Adv Child Dev Behav 32:1-35 |
| DeLoache, Judy S; Simcock, Gabrielle; Marzolf, Donald P (2004) Transfer by very young children in the symbolic retrieval task. Child Dev 75:1708-18 |
| DeLoache, Judy S; Uttal, David H; Rosengren, Karl S (2004) Scale errors offer evidence for a perception-action dissociation early in life. Science 304:1027-9 |
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