The Development of the Ability to Recognize the Meaning of Iconic Signs

Abstract

Early developmental psychologists viewed iconic representation as cognitively less complex than other forms of symbolic thought. It is therefore surprising that iconic signs are not acquired more easily than arbitrary signs by young language learners. One explanation is that children younger than 3 years have difficulty interpreting iconicity. The current study assessed hearing children's ability to interpret the meaning of iconic signs. Sixty-six 2.5- to 5-year-olds who had no previous exposure to signs were required to match iconic signs to pictures of referents. Whereas few of the 2.5-year-olds recognized the meaning of the iconic signs consistently, more than half of the 3.0-year-olds and most of 3.5-year-olds performed above chance. Thus, the ability to recognize the meaning of iconic signs gradually develops during the preschool years. Implications of these findings for sign language development, receptive signed vocabulary tests, and the development of the ability to interpret iconic symbols are discussed.

Iconicity as structure mapping

“…Further, structure mappings based on how an object is handled were recognized earlier than mappings based on the shape of an object, possibly because children may more easily apprehend how their own body maps to the handling gesture. Similar results with hearing children were reported by Tolar et al [37].…”

Developmental change in children’s sensitivity to sound symbolism

“…Such cross-modal correspondences may or may not be readily explained by iconicity, which relies mainly on within-modality visual correspondences (e.g., Namy & Nygaard, 2008). Accumulating evidence suggests that sensitivity to iconicity emerges gradually over development and does not consistently confer advantages in symbol processing (Bosworth & Emmorey, 2010;Meier, Mauk, Cheek, & Moreland, 2008;Namy, 2008;Novack, Goldin-Meadow, & Woodward, 2015;Ozcaliskan & GoldinMeadow, 2011;Tolar, Lederberg, Gokhale, & Tomasello, 2008). Studies examining the neural basis for sound symbolism suggest that processing symbolic versus non-sound symbolic words involves cross-modal sensory integration (Asano et al, 2015;Kovic, Plunkett, & Westermann, 2010;Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001;Revill, Namy, DeFife, & Nygaard, 2014) that might be motivated by an evolved sensitivity to correlated structure in the environment rather than iconicity (i.e., resemblance between symbol and referent) per se.…”

Comprehension of iconic gestures by chimpanzees and human children

“…This is important because other processes such as ontogenetic ritualization and associative learning can produce seemingly iconic gestures when in reality their iconicity does not play a role in how they are understood (Liszkowski, 2010). Earlier studies on iconic gestures in children did not distinguish between these different ways in which a gesture could be comprehended (Namy, 2008;Namy et al, 2004;Tolar, Lederberg, Gokhale, & Tomasello, 2008;Tomasello, Striano, & Rochat, 1999). For example, in Namy (2008), participants were introduced to a novel object and taught a certain way of handling the object.…”