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

Abstract

Touch screen devices are nowadays part of everyday life and parents and educators assume that young children use their images in a symbolic way. This research aims at replicating and expanding a previous one that reported that, contrary to expectations and to studies with printed or video images, 2-year-old children used the images on a touch screen tablet to retrieve a hidden object (Search), but not to communicate the location of an object they have observed being hidden (Point). In this research, we carried out a transfer study comparing the performance of an Experimental (Search-Point) and a Control group (Point-Point). First, we found that the Experimental group outperformed the Control group. Second, we found that the successful symbolic previous experience gained in the Search tasks was transferred to the Point task, task which 2-year-olds otherwise fail.

Children’s symbolic understanding of a digital, three-dimensional, interactive image (La comprensión simbólica infantil de una imagen digital, tridimensional e interactiva)

“…Our results differ from those of Jauck and Peralta (2016, 2019), who reported that by 24 months children used an image on a tablet as a source of information to solve a search task. A possible explanation for this difference could lie in the characteristics of the image they used, namely a digital photograph presented on a tablet that did not have the particularity of being interactive or three-dimensional, like the one designed and used in this study.…”

“…Cuando se trata de objetos bidimensionales, como fotografías impresas y videos, comprenden su función simbólica a los 30 meses (e.g., DeLoache, 1989; DeLoache & Burns, 1994; Peralta & Salsa, 2003; Troseth & DeLoache, 1998). Otros estudios mostraron que cuando se trata de una foto digital capturada con una tablet lo logran ya a los 24 meses (Jauck & Peralta, 2016, 2019). Estos resultados se comprenden a la luz de la hipótesis de la representación dual.…”

“…When it comes to two-dimensional objects, such as printed photographs and videos, they understand their symbolic function at 30 months (e.g., DeLoache, 1989; DeLoache & Burns, 1994; Peralta & Salsa, 2003; Troseth & DeLoache, 1998). Other studies have shown that they do so as early as 24 months with a digital photo captured with a tablet (Jauck & Peralta, 2016, 2019). These results can be understood in light of the dual representation hypothesis, in which the model is taken as a concrete object in itself, which prevents small children from seeing through the object to what it represents.…”

Mirror, Peephole and Video – The Role of Contiguity in Children’s Perception of Reference in Iconic Signs

“…Children's contingent or non-contingent experiences using pictorial media have been studied in two major paradigms: social contingency (de Saussure, 1968;Strouse et al, 2018) and physical contingency (Lauricella et al, 2010;Choi and Krikorian, 2016;Jauck and Peralta, 2019). Social contingency, when children respond according to social cues in their interaction with pictorial media, has been investigated in two directions.…”

El impacto de la secuencia visual en la comprensión simbólica de acciones en imágenes

“…Indagamos por el impacto de una variable que no había sido previamente investigada: la presencia o ausencia de la secuencia visual de las acciones en la comprensión simbólica de las imágenes que las representan. Este estudio se sitúa en una línea de investigación que conjuga dos vertientes que tradicionalmente se han abordado en forma separada: comprensión de acciones y comprensión simbólica de imágenes (Jauck & Peralta, 2017;2019).…”