A remarkable difference in the understanding of the symbolic relation between a scale model and the larger space that it represented was displayed by two age groups of young children. Three-year-old children who observed an object being hidden in a model knew where to find an analogous object hidden in the corresponding location in a room, but 2.5-year-old children did not. The success of the group of older children reveals an advance in their cognitive flexibility: they think of a model in two ways at the same time--both as the thing itself and as a symbol for something else.

In the first few years of life, children acquire a great deal of general information through symbolic media, including television. Here we explored whether very young children would use information presented via video to solve a retrieval problem. The children watched on a monitor as a toy was hidden in the room next door. A group of 2%-year-olds was very successful at finding the hidden toy based on the televised hiding event, but a group of 2-year-olds was not. Substantially better performance was achieved by other 2-year-olds who either watched the hiding event directly through a window or who believed they were watching directly (but were in fact looking at the monitor through the window). These results (like those from other symbolic media such as models and pictures) indicate that very young children have difficulty using a symbolic representation as a source of information about an existing situation.

To use a symbolic object such as a model, map, or picture, one must achieve dual representation; that is, one must mentally represent both the symbol itself and its relation to its referent. The studies reported here confirm predictions derived from this concept. As hypothesized, dual representation was as difficult for 2 1/2-year-olds to achieve with a set of individual objects as it was with an integrated model. Decreasing the physical salience of a scale model (by placing it behind a window) made it easier for 2 1/2-year-old children to treat it as a representation of something other than itself. Conversely, increasing the model's salience as an object (by allowing 3-year-old children to manipulate it) made it more difficult to appreciate its symbolic import. The results provide strong support for dual representation.

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Before one can understand or use any symbol, one must first realize that it is a symbol, that is, that it stands for or represents something other than itself. This article reports 4 studies investigating very young children's understanding of 2 different kinds of symbolic stimuli--scale models and pictures. The data replicate previous findings that 2.5-year-old children have great difficulty appreciating the relation between a scale model and the larger space it represents, but that they very readily appreciate the relation between a picture and its referent. This result is interpreted in terms of the dual orientation hypothesis. Models are difficult for young children because they require a dual representation--a child must think about a model both as an object itself and as a representation of something else. Because pictures are not salient as real objects, they do not require a dual representation. Several kinds of evidence supporting the dual orientation hypothesis are presented. An additional result was the occurrence of a transfer effect: Prior experience with a picture task led to better performance on a subsequent model task. This finding suggests that experience with a symbolic medium they understand can help young children figure out a different, unfamilar medium that they would otherwise not understand.

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We report a perception-action dissociation in the behavior of normally developing young children. In adults and older children, the perception of an object and the organization of actions on it are seamlessly integrated. However, as documented here, 18- to 30-month-old children sometimes fail to use information about object size and make serious attempts to perform impossible actions on miniature objects. They try, for example, to sit in a dollhouse chair or to get into a small toy car. We interpret scale errors as reflecting problems with inhibitory control and with the integration of visual information for perception and action.

Fairness is central to morality. Previous research has shown that children begin to understand fairness between the ages of four and six, depending on the context and method used. Within distributive contexts, there is little clear evidence that children have a concept of fairness before the age of five. This research, however, has mostly examined children's explicit verbal responses to questions about unequal distributions-a method that often underestimates children's knowledge. In the current study, we instead examined emotional and behavioral signs that children notice and dislike inequality. We distributed an unequal number of rewards (stickers) among pairs of children (the ages of three to five years) and probed their responses to the inequality.Both implicit and explicit measures revealed that children as young as three years old notice and react negatively to an unfair distribution, particularly when they receive less than their partner. The few age trends that were found involved verbal (explicit) responses, providing evidence that although children do not explicitly talk about fairness until the age of five or six, this talk is an effort to explain emotional reactions that emerged earlier in development.