In an orientation activity, the children were thenshown a “machine that can shrink toys”, and given an elaborate demonstration. They were thenshown another toy being hidden in the larger room, taken away, and returned to be shown the“shrunken room” and asked to find the toy in it. (The children’s acceptance of the “shrinking” wasthen assessed with the help of a questionnaire given to parents.)In the symbolic task, six of the 15 children never found the toy, and six retrieved it onlyonce. No child succeeded on more than two of the four trials. The children understood their task,and were happy to cooperate, but apparently didn’t understand that knowledge from one room couldbe applied the other.Children in the nonsymbolic task, however, did much better. 12 of the 17 subjects achievedthree or more errorless retrievals, and seven of those had perfect scores.In neither task did success change based on whether the trial was from small to large room,or vice versa.Because the symbolic task requires dual representation, whereas the nonsymbolic task doesnot, it can be concluded that very young children have a great deal of difficulty with that task. Limited cognitive ability makes it difficult to represent a single object in two different ways.That children’s comprehension of dual representation is called into question here haspractical implications: whether children understand what manipulables such as blocks, and otherquantity-representing objects are actually representing and whether anatomically correct dolls aidinvestigations of abuse if the child cannot perceive what the doll represents.This study shows the importance of not assuming that children understand the symbol-object relationship, no matter how uncomplicated it seems to those who are older....
