Transfer between Picture Books and the Real World by Very Young Children

Abstract

Picture book reading is a very common form of interaction between parents and very young children. Here we explore to what extent young children transfer novel information between picture books and the real world. We report that 15- and 18-month-olds can extend newly learned labels both from pictures to objects and from objects to pictures. However, the degree to which they do so is affected by iconicity—how much the objects and pictures resemble one another. The children in these studies more often extended the labels between picture and object when realistic photographs and drawings were involved than less realistic cartoons. These results show that higher levels of perceptual similarity between symbol and referent make the referential relation more transparent, thereby helping children transfer information between them. Thus, the educational function of early picture book interactions may best be served with realistic illustrations.

This research was supported by NIH grant HD-25271 to JSD and by NSF grant GA-0440254 to P. A. G. and J. S. D.

Notes

This research was supported by NIH grant HD-25271 to JSD and by NSF grant GA-0440254 to P. A. G. and J. S. D.

¹The loss of participations in both studies was primarily due to children's unwillingness to read the book. It is not uncommon for children of this age to sit for only brief periods of time to look at a particular book. The majority of the children excluded were simply too active to sit down long enough to finish the book.

²One 18-month-old and 14 of the 15-month-olds refused to point on at least one trial during the picture test. In these cases, the experimenter presented the child with unbound pictures of the objects and asked for the target item (similar to the picture tests in Study 1). This method enabled children to select the picture rather than simply point.