Young Children's Knowledge of the Representational Function of Pictorial Symbols: Development Across the Preschool Years in Three Cultures

Abstract

Three- to 5-year-old children's knowledge that pictures have a representational function for others was investigated using a pictorial false-belief task. In Study 1, children passed the task at around 4 years old, and performance was correlated with standard false-belief and pictorial symbol tasks. In Study 2, the performance of children from two cultural settings who had very little exposure to pictures during the first 3 years (Peru, India) was contrasted with that of children from Canada. Performance was better in the Canadian than Peruvian and Indian samples on the picture false-belief task and drawing tasks but not on the standard false-belief measure. In all settings, children passed drawing and standard false-belief tasks either concurrently with, or prior to, passing the picture false-belief task. The findings suggest that children's explicit knowledge of the representational function of pictorial symbols matures in the late preschool years and develops more rapidly in cultures that strongly promote the symbolic use of pictures early in life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the children and parents who participated in these experiments. Thanks to the Canadian early childhood educators from Children's Place Day Care, Ponderosa Play and Learn, and Lower South River Day Care for help in recruiting and for space to conduct the studies. In India, we thank program coordinator Nau Gora and field workers from Athik Samata Mandal who provided recruitment and logistical support. In Peru, thanks to development workers from Cáritas Huancayo and village leaders who assisted in recruitment and logistical support. Special thanks to our research assistants, Ujwala Vunduru (India), Christina Carreau (Peru), and Bethany Zeitner (Canada), who conducted the procedures with children.

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to the first author.

Notes

Note. Significance levels are given in brackets (all are one-tailed). Point biserial correlations are indicated by r_pb, and phi correlations are indicated by r_Ø.