Transfer by Very Young Children in the Symbolic Retrieval Task

Abstract

Cumulative experience with a variety of symbolic artifacts has been hypothesized as a source of young children's increasing sensitivity to new symbol-referent relations. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from transfer studies showing that experience with a relatively easy symbolic retrieval task improves performance on a more difficult task. Significant transfer was found for the 2(1/2)-year-old children in the 3 studies reported here, even with relatively low levels of contextual support (according to the taxonomy of transfer by Barnett & Ceci, 2002). Transfer occurred even though the 2 tasks were encountered in very different settings and there was a prolonged (1-week) delay interval between them. Transfer also occurred to a much more difficult task (one that even 3-year-olds typically fail).

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

“…In Group 1 the child indicated first and then searched, in Group 2 the other way around. This was done in order to see both, if children benefited from the experience in the previous task (DeLoache, Simcock & Marzolf, 2004;Marzolf & DeLoache, 1994;Peralta & Salsa, 2003), or if they failed due because the old information interfered with the new one (Ganea & Harris, 2013). The most important result found in this regard was that when the child started Searching, the execution in Indicate improved.…”

They can interact, but can they learn? Toddlers’ transfer learning from touchscreens and television

“…By this account, children must be adept at recognizing the relationship between symbolic objects (e.g., images on a tablet) and their real-world referents even though they differ in many attributes. Interestingly, there is mounting evidence of successful dual representation in 2.5-and 3-year-olds in scale model paradigms when perceptual cues between the model and testing room are similar (DeLoache, 2000;DeLoache et al, 2004). However, there is ongoing debate concerning the explanatory value of perceptual impoverishment versus memory flexibility in transfer tasks involving 2D media.…”

“…In addition, with televised models there are also changes in social cues (Nielsen, Simcock, & Jenkins, 2008;Troseth, Saylor, & Archer, 2006). Other researchers suggest that the transfer deficit results from children's lack of, or developing understanding of, the dual nature of symbolic objects; two-dimensional images are physical objects that depict other objects, that is, dual representation (DeLoache, 2000;DeLoache et al, 2004). By this account, children must be adept at recognizing the relationship between symbolic objects (e.g., images on a tablet) and their real-world referents even though they differ in many attributes.…”

“…In general, learned skills and knowledge are rarely tested in the same environment and under the same conditions in which learning takes place. More often, access to stored information must be transferred from one context to a novel context; this is termed transfer learning (Barnett & Ceci, 2002;Brown, 1990;DeLoache, Simcock, & Marzolf, 2004;Fisch, 2000). Barnett and Ceci's (2002) seminal review of the literature on transfer learning proposes that transfer distance mediates the cognitive resources required to complete the task.…”

Sous quelles conditions les représentations graphiques externes peuvent-elles favoriser l’apprentissage des enfants d’âge préscolaire ?

“…Les études de Deloache (2000), Deloache et Burns (1994) et Deloache, Simcock et Marzolf (2004) montrent que les enfants, très tôt (3 ans), peuvent utiliser la fonction symbolique des icônes. Quand les enfants ont utilisé des représentations symboliques pour résoudre un problème facile, ils ont une meilleure performance dans ce type de problème, mais plus difficile que s'ils n'avaient jamais affronté de problème en manipulant des représentations symboliques.…”