Children's conceptions of the relationship between pictures and their referents

Robinson, Elizabeth; Nye, Rebecca; Thomas, Glyn V.

doi:10.1016/0885-2014(94)90002-7

Cited by 56 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Many 3-to 4-year-olds replied as if they believed the picture updated to match the changed reality. Robinson, Nye, and Thomas (1994) confirmed the incidence of this kind of confusion among 3-to 4-year-olds and were able to define more precisely the nature of the error and the conditions under which it occurred. They adapted a procedure originally devised by Perner, Leekam, Myers, Davis, and Odgers (1993) in which a child was introduced to a doll wearing a distinctive sticker.…”

supporting

confidence: 48%

Realist Errors in Children's Responses to Pictures and Words as Representations

Thomas

Jolley

Robinson

et al. 1999

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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supporting

confidence: 48%

Realist Errors in Children's Responses to Pictures and Words as Representations

Thomas

Jolley

Robinson

et al. 1999

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…Asking both representational and 'real-world' questions is typical for researchers in the areas of theory of mind and also pictorial understanding; we can look to these literatures to ascertain predictors of the flexible interpretation of symbols. For instance, indices of preschoolers' advances in understanding relations between pictorial representation and reality were identified by Robinson, Nye, and Thomas (1994) and Robinson, Riggs, and Samuel (1996), and these may be tested for potential predictors of the competitive/ noncompetitive difference. For the theory-of-mind domain, one would look at direct tests of discriminating intended from unintended acts and consequences for predictors, on the grounds that pictorial appearance is just one tool used by children to infer what was in the artist's mind (Bloom & Markson, 1998; see also Kennedy, Gabbias, & Pierantoni, 1990).…”

Section: Child's Picturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young children show representational flexibility when interpreting drawings

2016

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a b s t r a c tDrawings can be ambiguous and represent more than one entity. In three experiments, we examine whether young children show representational flexibility by allowing one picture to be called by a second name. We also evaluate the hypothesis that children who are representationally flexible see the artist's intention as binding, rather than changeable. In Experiment 1, an artist declared what she intended to draw (e.g. a balloon) but then produced an ambiguous drawing. Children were asked whether the drawings could be interpreted differently (e.g. 'could this be a lollipop?') in the presence of a perceptually similar or dissimilar distractor (e.g., lollipop or snake). Six-year-olds accepted two labels for drawings in both conditions, but four-year-olds only did so in the dissimilar condition. Experiment 2 probed each possible interpretation more deeply by asking property questions (e.g., 'does it float?, does it taste good?'). Preschoolers who understood that the ambiguous drawing could be given two interpretations nevertheless mostly endorsed only properties associated with the prior intent. Experiment 3 provided converging evidence that 4-year-olds were representationally flexible using a paradigm that did not rely upon modal questioning. Taken together, our results indicate that even 4-year-olds understand that pictures may denote more than one referent, they still think of the symbol as consistent with the artist's original intention.

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“…Subsequently, children reveal understanding that photographs or drawings can represent their referents as they looked in the past rather than as they are currently (Robinson, Nye & Thomas, 1994;Thomas, Jolley, Robinson & Champion, 1999;Zaitchik, 1990). In a typical task, children see a drawing or a photograph of an object, and features of the object are then changed.…”

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Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders’ assumptions about the stability of written words’ meanings

Collins

Robinson

2005

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Pre-readers' assumptions about the stability of written words' meanings Abstract Results of 3 Experiments confirm previous findings that in a moving word task prereaders aged 3-5 years judge as if the meaning of a written word changes when it moves from a matching to a non-matching toy, for example when the word 'dog' moves from a dog to a boat. We explore under what circumstances children make such errors, and identify new conditions under which children were more likely correctly to treat written words' meanings as stable: When the word was placed alongside a non-matching toy without having previously been alongside a matching toy; when two words were moved each from a matching to a non-matching toy; and when children were asked to change what print said. Under these conditions children more frequently assumed physical forms had stable meaning, as they do with other forms of external representation.Keywords: Representation; Meta-language; Written words; Symbols 3 Assumptions about the stability of word meanings Can one written word mean many things?Pre-readers' assumptions about the stability of written words' meanings Over their preschool and early school years, normally developing children show increasing mastery at handling relationships between external representations of various kinds and their referents. A relatively early achievement at around two and a half years is the ability to use photographs, drawings or video recordings to locate hidden objects (DeLoache, 2004;DeLoache & Burns, 1994;Troseth & DeLoache, 1998;Liben, 1999).Later, at around three years of age, children become able to use scale models and simple maps in the same manner (DeLoache, 1991;Liben, 1999;Marzolf & DeLoache, 1994; see also MacConnell & Daehler, 2004). Subsequently, children reveal understanding that photographs or drawings can represent their referents as they looked in the past rather than as they are currently (Robinson, Nye & Thomas, 1994;Thomas, Jolley, Robinson & Champion, 1999;Zaitchik, 1990). In a typical task, children see a drawing or a photograph of an object, and features of the object are then changed. Many 3-year-olds judge as if they believe that the representation (out of sight) has physically changed to stay in match with its real referent. By 4 to 5 years of age few children make this error.Later still, by the age of around 6 to 7 years, children can evaluate as inadequate utterances which under-specify their intended referents (Flavell, Speer, Green & August, 1981;Robinson & Robinson, 1982;Apperly & Robinson, 1998) Furthermore, because written words have conventional generic meaning, we might find theoretically interesting differences in the developmental course of children's mastery of this form of representation in comparison with the others summarized above.In the hiding tasks mentioned children use a picture of a particular room; in standard false picture tasks the picture represents a particular aspect of the world; in tasks involving ambiguous utterances the speaker refers to a specific referent from...

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Children's conceptions of the relationship between pictures and their referents

Cited by 56 publications

References 14 publications

Realist Errors in Children's Responses to Pictures and Words as Representations

Realist Errors in Children's Responses to Pictures and Words as Representations

Young children show representational flexibility when interpreting drawings

Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders’ assumptions about the stability of written words’ meanings

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