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Using representations: comprehension and production of actions with imagined objects
1West Virginia University, Morgantown 26506-6040, USA.
Child Development
|August 1, 1995
Summary
Young children struggle with pantomime production and comprehension, often using body parts instead of imagined objects. This difficulty highlights developmental challenges in representational ability.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistic Development
Background:
- Young children and neurologically impaired adults exhibit difficulties in producing pantomimes involving imagined objects.
- A common error is substituting a body part to represent the object within the action.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the comprehension and production of pantomimes in young children and adults.
- To further understand the development of representational ability in children.
Main Methods:
- Study 1: Assessed pantomime comprehension and production in 3- and 5-year-old children and adults.
- Study 2: Replicated pantomime comprehension tasks with 3- and 4-year-old children.
Main Results:
- Young children demonstrated difficulties in both producing and comprehending pantomimes with imagined objects.
- Children performed better when comprehending pantomimes that used a body part representation.
- These comprehension difficulties were consistent across both studies.
Conclusions:
- Children's representational abilities are less independent of concrete environmental support compared to adults.
- Developmental progression shows increasing ability to represent actions with imagined objects.
- Findings contribute to understanding the emergence of abstract thought and symbolic representation.