When Color Takes Shape: Young Children Use Object Information from Their Own Drawings to Solve a Task.

In two studies, we examined whether and how 3- and 3½-year-old children were able to use object information from their own drawings to solve a task. The children had to produce drawings of simple objects and then use the shape and/or color of their pictures to identify replicas of the referents depicted. The results showed a relationship between graphic production and use. In Study 1, when shape was the single distinctive cue across objects, only the older group was able to produce and use drawings effectively. In Study 2, 3-year-olds used their drawings effectively when not only shape, but also color, were available as cues to identify the objects portrayed. Although most 3-year-olds' drawings did not reflect the shape of the referents, by incorporating color young children demonstrated to recognize the intention behind their own representations and used them to solve the task. Our findings are discussed in line with intentionality and Theory of Mind.

Conocimientos sobre dibujo, escritura y numerales en la producción gráfica materno-infantil, Argentina / Knowledge about drawing, writing and numerals in mother-child graphic production, Argentina / Conhecimentos sobre desenho, escrita e números na produção gráfica maternoinfantil, Argentina

Resumen (analítico) Este estudio examina los conocimientos sobre las propiedades formales y la función referencial del dibujo, la escritura y los numerales desplegados por madres y sus niños y niñas (2 ½ años y 4 años) en una tarea de producción conjunta. Se construyó un sistema de codificación mediante el método comparativo constante; se analizó mediante pruebas no paramétricas. Las díadas del grupo de 2 ½ años conversaron sobre la función referencial de los tres sistemas, especialmente del dibujo. A los 4 años se incrementó el interés en la escritura, la consideración de las propiedades formales de la escritura y los numerales; así como las producciones infantiles independientes de dibujo y escritura. El estudio mostró a la producción gráfica como una interacción educativa en la familia que estimula la apropiación temprana de las representaciones externas.

Abstract (analytical) This study examines the knowledge of formal properties and referential function of drawing, writing and numerals displayed by mothers and their children (2 and a half years old and 4 years old) in a joint production task. A coding system was constructed using the constant comparative method and was analyzed using non-parametric tests. The results of the group with 2 and half year old children demonstrated the referential function of the three systems, especially the drawing. At the age of 4 children's interest in writing increased, as well as the consideration of the formal properties of writing and numerals and the children's independent production of drawing and writing. The study demonstrated that graphic production is an educational interaction in the family that stimulates the early appropriation of external representations.

Resumo (analítico) Este estudo examina o conhecimento sobre as propriedades formais e a função referencial de desenho, escrita e numerais que mães, filhos e filhas (2 anos e meio e 4 anos) apresentados em tarefa de produção conjunta. O método comparativo constante foi utilizado para a construção do sistema de codificação; se analisou mediante provas não paramétricas. As duplas do grupo de 2 anos e meio conversaram sobre a função referencial dos três sistemas, especialmente do desenho. No grupo de 4 anos aumentaram o interesse pela escrita, a consideração das propriedades formais da escrita e dos numerais e as produções independentes de desenho e escrita. O estudo mostrou a produção gráfica conjunta como uma interação educacional na família que estimula a apropriação precoce de sistemas de representação externa.

Conocimientos sobre los aspectos formales y referenciales del dibujo, la escritura y los numerales en la lectura compartida entre madres y niños pequeños / Knowledge about the formal and referential aspects of drawing, writing and numerals during mothers and young children shared book reading

Los niños construyen conocimientos sobre los sistemas de representación externa en interacción con adultos que obran como mediadores de sus procesos cognitivos. Distintas investigaciones muestran que los niños reconocen el dibujo a partir de los 2 años y medio y pueden diferenciar entre dibujo, escritura y numerales alrededor de los 4 años. En este estudio se examinan los conocimientos sobre las propiedades formales y la función referencial de estos tres sistemas que niños de 2 años y medio y 4 años despliegan junto con sus madres durante la lectura compartida de un libro. Para ello se utilizó un libro que presenta en cada página dibujos de un animal, su nombre escrito y el numeral correspondiente a la cantidad de animales (1 a 9). Los análisis se centran en el foco de atención de las díadas, los aspectos del conocimiento notacional y las bases comunicativo-educativas de las interacciones, en función de la edad de los niños. Los resultados indican que las díadas centraron su atención en la función referencial del dibujo, como representación de la identidad del referente a los 2 años y medio, y de la identidad y la cantidad a los 4 años. Aunque la atención en la escritura y los numerales fue menor, las madres de los niños más pequeños brindaron información sobre las propiedades formales de los numerales, y las madres y los niños de 4 años elaboraron este aspecto del conocimiento de ambos sistemas. Se discuten estos resultados en relación con el potencial de la lectura compartida para la apropiación temprana del conocimiento notacional.

Children acquire knowledge about external representational systems in interaction with adults who operate as mediators of their cognitive processes. Several studies have shown that 2.5-year-old children are able to recognize drawings, and 4-year-old children can distinguish between drawing, writing and numerals. The present study focuses on a developmental analysis of the knowledge about the formal properties and the referential function of these three systems that 2.5- and 4-year-old children unfold with their mothers during shared reading sessions. The referential function is the representational relation between the system and the referent. Each system has a referential function that is the result of a social convention: figurative drawing depicts the identity and characteristics of the referent, writing is a graphic representation of oral language and numerals represent numerical information. The formal properties include the name of the representational systems and their graphic units, the form of the strokes, their spatial disposition and their compositional rules. Our specific goals were:(1) to establish which representational system isthe main focus of attention; (2) to describe and analyze whether and how mothers and children elaborate knowledge about the formal properties and referential function of the systems; (3) to understand how notational knowledge emerges describing the educative-communicative basis of the interactions; and (4) to compare the focus of attention, notational knowledge and the educative-communicative basis of interactions as a function of children's age. Twenty-six mothers and their 2.5- (n = 13) and 4-year-old children (n = 13) participated. They were given a book and told to look at it together. The book was specially designed for this study; it includes in each page drawings of an animal, its written name and the numeral for the number of animals depicted (1 to 9). We designed a system of categories with three levels of analysis, related to the specific goals of the study: focus of attention, notational knowledge and educative-communicative basis. We performed non-parametric statistical analysis: Wilcoxon test and Mann- Whitney's U test. Results show that dyads of both age groups focused their attention on drawings more than on writing and numerals. However, 4-year-old children and their mothers made significantly more utterances about writing and numerals than the other group. Attention to writing and numerals in the older group seemed to be guided by mothers' interest to teach those systems to their children. Dyads talked especially about the referential function of drawing, as a representation of the identity of the referent at 2.5 years of age and as a representation of the identity and quantity at 4 years. Although less attention was paid to writing and numerals, the youngest children's mothers provided information about the formal properties of numerals and the mothers and the 4-year-old children elaborated this aspect of knowledge of both representational systems. Furthermore, in the older group, dyads started to discuss the referential function of numerals. With regard to the educative-communicative basis of the interactions, the mothers of both age groups tended to request information about the referents of drawings more than to provide their children with this kind of information. The mothers in the 2.5-year-olds' group provided information about the formal properties of numerals, while in the 4-year-olds' group the mothers both requested and provided this kind of information. Finally, the formal properties of writing were elaborated only by mothers in the older group. We discuss these results in terms of the potential of shared reading for the early acquisition of notational knowledge.

Developmental Changes in Early Comprehension and Production of Drawings: Evidence From Two Socioeconomic Backgrounds.

Two studies examined young children's comprehension and production of representational drawings across and within 2 socioeconomic strata (SES). Participants were 130 middle-SES (MSES) and low-SES (LSES) Argentine children, from 30 to 60 months old, given a task with 2 phases, production and comprehension. The production phase assessed free drawing and drawings from simple 3-dimensional objects (model drawing); the comprehension phase assessed children's understanding of an adult's line drawings of the objects. MSES children solved the comprehension phase of the task within the studied age range; representational production emerged first in model drawing (42 months) and later in free drawing (48 months). The same developmental pathway was observed in LSES children but with a clear asynchrony in the age of onset of comprehension and production: Children understood the symbolic nature of drawings at 42 months old and the first representational drawings were found at 60 months old. These results provide empirical evidence that support the crucial influence of social experiences by organizing and constraining graphic development.

Del objeto al símbolo: Aspectos cognitivos y sociales del conocimiento infantil sobre las imágenes / From object to symbol: Cognitive and social aspects of children's knowledge of pictures

Desde temprano en sus vidas, los niños están expuestos a una variedad de representaciones figurativas en fotografías, libros, en la televisión y el video. Este artículo postula que a pesar de la similitud perceptual entre estas imágenes y sus referentes, su comprensión es un proceso complejo en el que participan mecanismos perceptuales, cognitivos y sociocognitivos. La primera parte del artículo revisa investigaciones que han identificado los principales hitos evolutivos en la comprensión de las representaciones figurativas y los mecanismos perceptuales y cognitivos que subyacen a este proceso. Este análisis permite proponer tres fases en este desarrollo (pre-simbólica, simbólica y post-simbólica) desde el nacimiento hasta el comienzo de los años escolares. La segunda parte examina la influencia en la comprensión de factores relacionados con el contexto social, específicamente la experiencia simbólica y la intención del creador y/o el usuario de una imagen. De esta manera, las habilidades para la cognición social y el aprendizaje cultural son también cruciales en el conocimiento y uso de representaciones figurativas.

From early in infancy, children are exposed to a wide variety of figurative representations; they read picture books and magazines with their parents and look at family photos and images on television and video. Figurative representations are a particular type of external representations. An external representation is "something that someone intends to stand for or represent something other than itself" (DeLoache, 1995, p. 109). Figurative representations are two-dimensional representations highly similar to their referents; however, this article develops the idea that even though this perceptual similarity, figurative representations are not transparent objects for very young children. Understanding the dual nature of pictures, that they are things in themselves and communicate meaning by referring to some other reality, is a lengthy and complex developmental process influenced and determined by perceptual, cognitive and social-cognitive mechanisms. The first part of the article reviews studies that have identified the major milestones in pictorial comprehension and discusses the perceptual (discrimination, categorization) and cognitive mechanisms (concept formation, analogical reasoning, representational strategies) underlying this process.This analysis allows us to propose three phases of development from birth to the beginning of the school period: (1) apre-symbolic phase, between 0 and 18 months of age, when infants mainly take a manipulative stance toward pictures; (2) a symbolic phase, between two and three years, when children comprehend and use the symbolic link between pictures and referents; and (3) a post-symbolic phase, after four years, when children understand that the contents of pictures remain stable despite any change made to the real objects they depict. The second part of the article examines the influence of social factors on pictorial comprehension, specifically symbolic experience and the intention of the creator and/or user of a picture. The supporting role of social factors in symbolic development has long been demonstrated in the domain of language (see Baldwin, 2000; Tomasello, 1999, 2003); in contrast, very little is known about the impact of social cognitive mechanisms (cultural learning, intentionality) in children's knowledge of pictures. DeLoache (1995, 2002) proposed that with age children gain experience with symbols and develop a general expectation or readiness to look for and detect symbolic relations among entities. However, this paper presents evidence that symbolic experience has a crucial social dimension; supportive contexts that highlight the relation between pictorial symbols and their referents in close social interactions facilitate children's comprehension of images (Callaghan & Rankin, 2002; Szechter & Liben, 2004). Cross-cultural and social differences in the age of onset of symbolic comprehension also support this hypothesis (Callaghan et al., 2011; Salsa, in press). Intention is both necessary and sufficient to establish a symbolic relation (Werner & Kaplan, 1963); understanding intentionality is especially important for interpreting symbols because their meaning is assigned by the symbol creator or user. There is abundant evidence that young infants (12 months) are sensitive to basic aspects of the intentions of adults who act on objects in the world, and that older infants (18-24 months) begin to discern the more subtle communicative intentions of adults found in the flow of actions found in social exchanges using language symbols (Tomasello, 2003). A few studies have explored whether children are sensitive to another person's intention to represent when they name drawings or use photographs in a search task (Bloom & Markson, 1998; Gelman & Ebeling, 1998; Preissler & Bloom, 2008; Salsa & Peralta, 2007). Nevertheless, these studies show that children's ability to read intentions is another privileged route towards symbolic understanding.

Del objeto al símbolo: Aspectos cognitivos y sociales del conocimiento infantil sobre las imágenes / From object to symbol: Cognitive and social aspects of childrens knowledge of pictures

Desde temprano en sus vidas, los niños están expuestos a una variedad de representaciones figurativas en fotografías, libros, en la televisión y el video. Este artículo postula que a pesar de la similitud perceptual entre estas imágenes y sus referentes, su comprensión es un proceso complejo en el que participan mecanismos perceptuales, cognitivos y sociocognitivos. La primera parte del artículo revisa investigaciones que han identificado los principales hitos evolutivos en la comprensión de las representaciones figurativas y los mecanismos perceptuales y cognitivos que subyacen a este proceso. Este análisis permite proponer tres fases en este desarrollo (pre-simbólica, simbólica y post-simbólica) desde el nacimiento hasta el comienzo de los años escolares. La segunda parte examina la influencia en la comprensión de factores relacionados con el contexto social, específicamente la experiencia simbólica y la intención del creador y/o el usuario de una imagen. De esta manera, las habilidades para la cognición social y el aprendizaje cultural son también cruciales en el conocimiento y uso de representaciones figurativas.(AU)

From early in infancy, children are exposed to a wide variety of figurative representations; they read picture books and magazines with their parents and look at family photos and images on television and video. Figurative representations are a particular type of external representations. An external representation is "something that someone intends to stand for or represent something other than itself" (DeLoache, 1995, p. 109). Figurative representations are two-dimensional representations highly similar to their referents; however, this article develops the idea that even though this perceptual similarity, figurative representations are not transparent objects for very young children. Understanding the dual nature of pictures, that they are things in themselves and communicate meaning by referring to some other reality, is a lengthy and complex developmental process influenced and determined by perceptual, cognitive and social-cognitive mechanisms. The first part of the article reviews studies that have identified the major milestones in pictorial comprehension and discusses the perceptual (discrimination, categorization) and cognitive mechanisms (concept formation, analogical reasoning, representational strategies) underlying this process.This analysis allows us to propose three phases of development from birth to the beginning of the school period: (1) apre-symbolic phase, between 0 and 18 months of age, when infants mainly take a manipulative stance toward pictures; (2) a symbolic phase, between two and three years, when children comprehend and use the symbolic link between pictures and referents; and (3) a post-symbolic phase, after four years, when children understand that the contents of pictures remain stable despite any change made to the real objects they depict. The second part of the article examines the influence of social factors on pictorial comprehension, specifically symbolic experience and the intention of the creator and/or user of a picture. The supporting role of social factors in symbolic development has long been demonstrated in the domain of language (see Baldwin, 2000; Tomasello, 1999, 2003); in contrast, very little is known about the impact of social cognitive mechanisms (cultural learning, intentionality) in childrens knowledge of pictures. DeLoache (1995, 2002) proposed that with age children gain experience with symbols and develop a general expectation or readiness to look for and detect symbolic relations among entities. However, this paper presents evidence that symbolic experience has a crucial social dimension; supportive contexts that highlight the relation between pictorial symbols and their referents in close social interactions facilitate childrens comprehension of images (Callaghan & Rankin, 2002; Szechter & Liben, 2004). Cross-cultural and social differences in the age of onset of symbolic comprehension also support this hypothesis (Callaghan et al., 2011; Salsa, in press). Intention is both necessary and sufficient to establish a symbolic relation (Werner & Kaplan, 1963); understanding intentionality is especially important for interpreting symbols because their meaning is assigned by the symbol creator or user. There is abundant evidence that young infants (12 months) are sensitive to basic aspects of the intentions of adults who act on objects in the world, and that older infants (18-24 months) begin to discern the more subtle communicative intentions of adults found in the flow of actions found in social exchanges using language symbols (Tomasello, 2003). A few studies have explored whether children are sensitive to another persons intention to represent when they name drawings or use photographs in a search task (Bloom & Markson, 1998; Gelman & Ebeling, 1998; Preissler & Bloom, 2008; Salsa & Peralta, 2007). Nevertheless, these studies show that childrens ability to read intentions is another privileged route towards symbolic understanding.(AU)