Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Developing symbolic capacity one step at a time.

Janellen Huttenlocher1, Marina Vasilyeva, Nora Newcombe

  • 1University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, 5848 S. University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. hutt@uchicago.edu

Cognition
|February 7, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Infection following foot and ankle surgery : a subanalysis of data captured from the UK Foot and Ankle Thromboembolism (FATE) audit.

The bone & joint journal·2026
Same author

Comparative evaluation of nerve repair and local tissue response following ReFeel<sup>®</sup> nerve cuff implantation in a rat sciatic model.

Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology·2026
Same author

Community Health Worker Feedback on an mHealth Intervention for Hypertension in Rural Guatemala: Mixed Methods Formative Study.

JMIR formative research·2026
Same author

How do parents initiate and sustain math-related conversations with preschoolers? Employing conversation analysis to examine parent-child math talk.

Developmental psychology·2026
Same author

Puf4 is methylated and exhibits a temperature-dependent interactome in <i>Cryptococcus neoformans</i>.

Microbiology spectrum·2026
Same author

Feasibility study of a novel mHealth clinical decision support application to enable Community Health Workers to manage hypertension in rural Guatemala.

medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences·2026
Same journal

Corrigendum to 'Consonant, vowel, and tone cues in early wordform recognition: Evidence from Cantonese-learning infants' [Cognition 275 (2026) 106624].

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Identifying distinct sources of whole number interference in children's decimal comparison: the role of numerical magnitude and inhibitory control.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Evidence for abstract spatial concept learning in young animals.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Blurred lines or clear boundaries? Synchrony and social dominance shape domain-specific self-other processing.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Knowability predicts curiosity and learning.

Cognition·2026
Same journal

Throwing good effort after bad: Evidence for a sunk-cost effect in cognitive effort-based decision-making.

Cognition·2026
See all related articles

Four-year-old children can use models for distance scaling tasks, similar to map tasks. However, retrieval tasks are harder than placement tasks, impacting symbolic development understanding.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Spatial Reasoning
  • Symbolic Development

Background:

  • Children's ability to understand spatial relationships and use representations is crucial for cognitive development.
  • Previous research explored spatial scaling using maps, providing a baseline for comparison.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate 4-year-old children's capacity for distance scaling using models.
  • To compare the difficulty of model-based tasks with map-based tasks.
  • To differentiate the cognitive demands of retrieval versus placement tasks in spatial contexts.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment 1: Assessed children's performance on distance scaling tasks using physical models.
  • Experiment 2: Compared the difficulty of retrieval tasks (locating hidden objects) versus placement tasks (placing visible objects) in actual spaces.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Tasks involving models were found to be comparable in difficulty to previously studied map-based tasks.
  • Retrieval tasks proved significantly more challenging for children than placement tasks.

Conclusions:

  • Children's spatial scaling abilities are evident with models, mirroring map performance.
  • The greater difficulty of retrieval tasks suggests specific challenges in symbolic representation and spatial memory for young children.
  • Findings offer insights into the developmental trajectory of symbolic understanding and spatial cognition.