Realist Errors in Children's Responses to Pictures and Words as Representations

Thomas, Glyn V.; Jolley, Richard P.; Robinson, Elizabeth; Champion, Helen

doi:10.1006/jecp.1999.2506

Cited by 20 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In contrast when changes were made to a doll other than the one represented in writing children answered correctly that the writing had not changed and reported correctly what was written. The implication of the results of Thomas et al (1999) is that children tend to assume that changes in physical form accompany changes in meaning. This is apparently contrary to the assumption revealed by errors in Bialystok's moving word task, that one physical form can have two meanings.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Subsequently, children reveal understanding that photographs or drawings can represent their referents as they looked in the past rather than as they are currently (Robinson, Nye & Thomas, 1994;Thomas, Jolley, Robinson & Champion, 1999;Zaitchik, 1990). In a typical task, children see a drawing or a photograph of an object, and features of the object are then changed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A child who over-emphasized the representational aspect of the written word might be expected to assume that the physical form of the representation changed with the real referent (Beilin Assumptions about the stability of word meanings There is some evidence that children do err in that latter way with written words. Thomas et al (1999) gave 3-and 4-year-olds a task in which a doll wore a sticker showing a sheep. The experimenter wrote the doll's name followed by 'sheep' and turned the paper face down.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is apparently contrary to the assumption revealed by errors in Bialystok's moving word task, that one physical form can have two meanings. However this one study by Thomas et al (1999) should perhaps not be given too much weight. The question about physical change may have been difficult for children to understand.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders’ assumptions about the stability of written words’ meanings

Collins

Robinson

2005

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pre-readers' assumptions about the stability of written words' meanings Abstract Results of 3 Experiments confirm previous findings that in a moving word task prereaders aged 3-5 years judge as if the meaning of a written word changes when it moves from a matching to a non-matching toy, for example when the word 'dog' moves from a dog to a boat. We explore under what circumstances children make such errors, and identify new conditions under which children were more likely correctly to treat written words' meanings as stable: When the word was placed alongside a non-matching toy without having previously been alongside a matching toy; when two words were moved each from a matching to a non-matching toy; and when children were asked to change what print said. Under these conditions children more frequently assumed physical forms had stable meaning, as they do with other forms of external representation.Keywords: Representation; Meta-language; Written words; Symbols 3 Assumptions about the stability of word meanings Can one written word mean many things?Pre-readers' assumptions about the stability of written words' meanings Over their preschool and early school years, normally developing children show increasing mastery at handling relationships between external representations of various kinds and their referents. A relatively early achievement at around two and a half years is the ability to use photographs, drawings or video recordings to locate hidden objects (DeLoache, 2004;DeLoache & Burns, 1994;Troseth & DeLoache, 1998;Liben, 1999).Later, at around three years of age, children become able to use scale models and simple maps in the same manner (DeLoache, 1991;Liben, 1999;Marzolf & DeLoache, 1994; see also MacConnell & Daehler, 2004). Subsequently, children reveal understanding that photographs or drawings can represent their referents as they looked in the past rather than as they are currently (Robinson, Nye & Thomas, 1994;Thomas, Jolley, Robinson & Champion, 1999;Zaitchik, 1990). In a typical task, children see a drawing or a photograph of an object, and features of the object are then changed. Many 3-year-olds judge as if they believe that the representation (out of sight) has physically changed to stay in match with its real referent. By 4 to 5 years of age few children make this error.Later still, by the age of around 6 to 7 years, children can evaluate as inadequate utterances which under-specify their intended referents (Flavell, Speer, Green & August, 1981;Robinson & Robinson, 1982;Apperly & Robinson, 1998) Furthermore, because written words have conventional generic meaning, we might find theoretically interesting differences in the developmental course of children's mastery of this form of representation in comparison with the others summarized above.In the hiding tasks mentioned children use a picture of a particular room; in standard false picture tasks the picture represents a particular aspect of the world; in tasks involving ambiguous utterances the speaker refers to a specific referent from...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 98%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders’ assumptions about the stability of written words’ meanings

Collins

Robinson

2005

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, when the number system is used in a teaching-learning process, the child is required to perform a relatively complicated cognitive process. He or she has to refer to the meaning behind the symbols and to make the connections between the symbols and the quantities (Kaput, 1991;Lesh & Doerr, 2000, Thomas, Jolley, Robinson & Champion, 1999. The development of symbolic thinking addresses the cognitive processes that take place in the structure of the mental representation during the change from the "unity level" to that of the "differentiation level" (Nemirovsky & Monk, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%