Children's Iconic Realism: Object Versus Property Realism

Grasping the Nature of Pictures

“…For example, it takes several years for children to sort out the full nature of picturereferent relations. Preschool children sometimes confuse the properties of objects and pictures, indicating, for example, that a photograph of an ice cream cone could be cold to touch and even occasionally lapsing into manual behavior toward pictures (Beilin & Pearlman, 1991). Children of this age often think, on the one hand, that an action carried out on a picture will affect its referent (Flavell, Flavell, Green, & Korfmacher, 1990) and, on the other hand, that an action on a real object will transform a picture of the object (Robinson, Nye, & Thomas, 1994;Zaitchik, 1990).…”

“…Alongside this evidence of sophisticated picture perception in infancy are several anecdotes and informal reports of young children confusing pictures and referents (Beilin & Pearlman, 1991;Church, 1961;Werner & Kaplan, 1967). For example, Perner (1991) described his 16-month-old son intently trying to step into a picture of a shoe.…”

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

“…Children making realist errors, for example, might know that a picture of ice cream could not be eaten, but might nevertheless state incorrectly that the ice cream in a picture had changed its appearance once its real referent had done so (see Beilin & Pearlman, 1991). Similarly, children making realist errors about names might still know that the word "ice cream" need not feel cold and wet.…”

“…In what are now often described as "false-picture tasks," many children up to 4 years of age appear to make such realist errors with respect to pictures (see also Beilin & Pearlman, 1991). In the form of this task originally developed by Zaitchik (1990), children witnessed a photograph being taken of a toy in Location A.…”

Emergence of representational activity during the early drawing stage: process analysis

“…That is, the data indicate that even though 1-year-olds cannot draw the component parts of an object by themselves, they intend to draw something based on their development of object cognition and symbolic function (Beilin & Pearlman, 1991;Mandler, 1997). Furthermore, 2-year-old children do not yet know the method of drawing by organizing component parts, but they start drawing component parts.…”