Waiting to Use a Symbol: The Effects of Delay on Children's Use of Models

Abstract

To use a symbol to solve a problem, children must achieve representational insight; they must realize that the symbol stands for its referent. Moreover, they must keep this relation in mind as they attempt to use the symbol. The present studies investigated the achievement and maintenance of representational insight. 3-year-olds were asked to use a scale model of a room to find a toy hidden in the room. In Study 1a, children first watched as a small toy was hidden in the model. They then waited either 20 sec, 2 min, or 5 min before attempting to find a similar, larger toy that was hidden in the corresponding place in the room. All children experienced all delay intervals; three groups experienced the delays in different orders. There was a dramatic effect of delay order. The children who experienced the 20-sec delay on their first trial generally performed well throughout the 6 trials, but the children who experienced a 5-min delay first almost always failed to find the toy in the room even on subsequent trials with shorter delays. Additional studies revealed that the negative effects of the initial long delay could be overcome by providing reminders of the model and its relevance (Studies 2 and 3) or giving children prior experience in using the model (Study 4). The results indicate that keeping a symbol-referent relation in mind can be difficult for 3.0-year-old children. This research is discussed in terms of the importance of maintaining representational insight.

Preschoolers' Understanding of Plan and Oblique Maps: The Role of Geometric and Representational Correspondence

“…That is, if one wants to know the conditions under which there is representational insight, the stimuli used in the current work would be inappropriately difficult. For this purpose, it is more appropriate to use simpler stimuli and tasks as in the program of research by DeLoache and colleagues on the early emergence of children's ability to link symbols and referents (e.g., DeLoache, 1989;Uttal, Schreiber, & DeLoache, 1995).…”

Comparison and Categorization in the Development of Relational Similarity

“…Namy, Smith, and CershkofF-Stowe (in press) found that 2year-oids more readily learned how to categorize two sets of like objects if they were given opportunities to compare the objects. Uttal, Schreiber, and DeLoache (1995) found that 4-year-oIds were able to solve a difficult delayed version of the DeLoache (1987) room-to-model mapping task (in which children search for a hidden toy by finding the object in one room that corresponds to a designated object in another, smaller room) if they had first experienced a version in which they were allov^'ed to search immediately. Children in the immediate search task had perhaps achieved an alignment of the two spaces which they could then preserve under more difficult circumstances.…”

“…In this article we test a specific version of the knowledge-change hypothesis: Gent-ner's (1988) relational shift hypothesis, later amplified into what Gentner and Rattermann (1991) called the "career of similarity" hypothesis (see also Gentner & Medina, 1996). This account posits that within any given domain (a) overall similarity is the earliest and most naturally responded to (e.g., Rovee-Collier & Fagen, 1981), and {b) the order in which partial matches come to be noticed is, first, matching objects, then matching relations, and finally matching higher-order relations.^ Our assumption is that this sequence is epistemological, not maturational: Children come to perceive similarity between objects (e.g., the likeness between a red apple and a red ball) before they perceive similarity among relations {e.g., the similarity between an apple/a/Zing from a tiee and a spoon falling from a table); and appreciation of such lower-order relational similarity in turn precedes appreciation of higher-order relational similarity (similarity in relations between relations: e.g., the similarity between a squirrel swishing its tail and causing an apple to fall from a tiee, and a toddler waving her arm and causing a cup to fall off the table).Ĝ entner and Rattermann (1991) reviewed a large body of research that supports the relational shift hypothesis in that (a) the ability to perceive relational similarity appears later than the ability to perceive object similarity, and {b) this relational insight appears at different ages in different domains (e.g.. Billow, 1975;Brown et al, 1986;Bryant & Trabasso, 1971;Chipman & Mendelson, 1979;DeLoache, 1989, in press;Gentner, 1977aGentner, , 1977bGentner, , 1988Gentner & Toupin, 1986;Goswami, 1989;Pears & Bryant, 1989;Rattermann, Gentner, & De-Loache, 1989;Smith, 1984;Uttal & De-Loache, 1995;Uttal, Schreiber, & DeLoache, 1995). In particular, when relational similarity is pitted against object similarity, younger children are more infiuenced by object matches, and less able to attend to relational matches, than are older children (Gentner, 1988;Gentiier, Rattermann, Markman, & Kotovsky, 1995;…”

Dual Representation and Young Children's Use of Scale Models

“…Children's performance can be very different in different versions of this task. Older children perform more poorly if there is a lower level of physical similarity between a scale model and the larger space it represents , if the model-room relation is not fully and explicitly described and demonstrated for them (DeLoache, 1989;DeLoache, De-Mendoza, & Anderson, 1999), or if a delay is imposed between the hiding event and the opportunity for retrieval (Uttal, Schreiber, & DeLoache, 1995). In contrast, younger children do well in the standard task if they first have a successful experience with an easy symbolic task (Marzolf & DeLoache, 1994).…”