Transfer in young children's understanding of spatial representations

The creative and flexible use of symbols is a unique human ability. In order to use a symbol, one must understand the basic relation between the symbol and what it represents. How do young children come to appreciate such relations? One possibility is that insight into one symbolic relation helps children appreciate different ones. The 3 studies presented here support this possibility. In Experiments 1 and 2, both 2.5- and 3.0-year-old children showed transfer from an easy task that required appreciation of a model-room symbolic relation to a more difficult one, one that children their age typically do not appreciate. In Experiment 3, 2.5-year-olds showed transfer between symbol types: Experience with a model-room relation helped them appreciate a map-room relation. These transfer effects are consistent with the claim that early experience with symbolic relations contributes to symbolic sensitivity, a basic readiness to recognize that one object or event may stand for another.