Means of communication and sources of information: Two-year-old children's use of pictures as symbols

Abstract

People use pictures for many purposes, but two common functions are to communicate information to others and to extract new information. Previous research has demonstrated that 2-year-old children fail in using pictures as sources of information in search tasks (DeLoache & Burns, 1994). The purpose of this research was to investigate if children this age could, nonetheless, communicate via a picture the location of an object they have observed being hidden and, if so, whether experience with this function can facilitate using pictures as sources of information. Results show that children successfully used pictures to communicate information and that the symbolic awareness children gained with this task was rapidly transferred to one that required using pictures to extract information, task in which they otherwise fail.

La comprensión simbólica temprana de una imagen digital como medio de comunicación y fuente de información

“…While the children in the present study at first found not easy to use images to communicate a real observed situation, with the prior successful experience in the search task theperformance significantly improved. These results are not consistent with a previous study (Peralta & Salsa, 2009) in which with a similar task but using printed pictures on paper children found easier to use the images as a mean of communication than as a source of information.…”

“…under the bed), showed to the child in the image where she hid it and then the child had to find the object in the room based on the information provided by the image: Search task. On the other hand, we adapted the task designed by Peralta (Peralta & DeLoache, 2004;Peralta & Salsa, 2009) where the child had to point/show/indicate in a picture the location where she or he had seen an object being hidden by the experimenter: Indicate task. The tasks consisted of four subtests, in each the toy was hidden in four of five different possible locations (bed, cushions, box, armchair and bedside table).…”

“…Later studies have also showed that a previous successful experience using images symbolically has a positive influence on a subsequent more difficult task (Peralta & Salsa, 2009;Troseth, 2003), illustrating a transfer effect. Previous experience has been proposed as a mechanism that promotes symbolic sensitivity, that is, "a general expectation or willingness to search and detect symbolic relationships between entities" (DeLoache, 2002, p. 216).…”

“…As far as using an image as a mean of communication, Peralta (Peralta & DeLoache, 2004;Peralta & Salsa, 2009) designed a task with a somehow reverse procedure. In this task the researcher hid the toy somewhere in the room while the child observed, then, requested the child to indicate the hiding location of the toy in a photograph of the room.…”

Two-Year-Olds’ Symbolic Use of Images Provided by a Tablet: A Transfer Study

“…In sum, research has shown that 3-year-old children succeed when the information concerning the hiding location is provided by a scale model. However, when the same information is provided by a printed or video image, children succeed at 2½ years of age, but not at 2 years of age (DeLoache and Burns, 1994;Troseth and DeLoache, 1998;Schmitt and Anderson, 2002;Peralta and Salsa, 2009).…”