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Interdisciplinaria

On-line version ISSN 1668-7027

Abstract

SALSA, Analía Marcela. Desarrollo simbólico en niños pequeños: El rol de la instrucción en la comprensión y el uso de símbolos. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2004, vol.21, n.1, pp.5-27. ISSN 1668-7027.

   Early symbolic understanding is influenced by multiple factors, like instruction, physical similarity and experience. The primary interest of this research was to study the impact of adult instruction on young children's understanding and use of the symbolic function of a scale model. The amount of information or instruction that children were given about the relation between the symbol and its referent was varied in complete and minimal instructions. Prior experience with the same type of symbol was also varied in order to study learning and transfer effects in early symbolic development.    Three experiments were conducted using an object retrieval task. All of them required a small space, furnished like a room, and its highly iconic similar-sized scale model (2:1 linear size difference) in order to facilitate the task and test very young children. Previous research has shown that 3-year-old children recognize the relation between two small spaces with minimal instructions (DeLoache, Peralta de Mendoza & Anderson, 1999). Moreover, similarity in scale makes 2-1/2-year-olds, who typically fail the model task, able to succeed with full instructions (DeLoache, Kolstad & Anderson, 1991).    The first study compared the performance of two groups of 2-1/2-year-old children in two similar-scale tasks: one with minimal and the other with complete instructions. The purpose of this experiment was to test if the facilitative effects of size similarity could compensate for less informational support. If this is the case, 2-1/2-year-olds should succeed either with complete or with minimal instructions.    In the second study, 2-1/2 and 3-year-old children participated in a minimal instructions similar-scale task. This study examined age differences in children's performance in order to further investigate the interaction between age and instruction in the achievement of representational insight.    The third study explored learning and transfer effects as a function of previous instructional experience. This last study examined if prior experience in a similar-scale task with complete instructions had an impact on the subsequent performance of 2-1/2-year-old children in the same task but with minimal instructions, situation in which they otherwise fail.    The results, in combination with prior research, show that instruction acts in concert with size similarity and age; while 3-year-olds need minimal instructional support in order to succeed, the omission of complete instructions seriously disrupts 2-1/2-year-old children's performance. The high level of similarity between the scale model and the space it represents does not guarantee that children of this age can detect the symbolic relation without an adult providing scaffolding in the form of full informational support.    The importance of the information given for young children's symbolic understanding and use is clearly shown in the transfer study. This study provides evidence, for the first time, of the interaction between instruction and previous specific experience. Once that representational insight is gained with complete instructions, 2-1/2-year-olds transfer it to a model task where they receive less informational support, situation that is beyond their independent symbolic competence. Thus, this evidence of transfer contributes to the understanding of the complex relationships between learning and development in early symbolization. Two-and-a-half-year-old children may be in a zone of sensitivity for the development of the understanding of this symbolic artifact, and therefore, greatly benefit from adult instruction.    In sum, this research illustrates the interplay between instruction, size similarity, age and symbolic experience in early understanding and use of the representational function of a scale model. For younger children, instruction is essential even when the task contains two highly iconic similar spaces. Moreover, these instructions have lasting impact on how children conceive a scale model on a subsequent task. This demonstration of the joint influence of multiple factors highlights the complexity of the acquisition of external systems of representation.

Keywords : Scale models; Instruction; Perceptual similarity; Symbolic experience; Transfer.

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