Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Psychology Review of 8220the Credible Shrinking Room Review of 8220the Credible Shrinking Room Review of “the Credible Shrinking Room: Very Young Children’s Performance With Symbolic and This study is performed on 2.5 year olds, and tests their ability to use their knowledge of the location of a toy (Troll-doll named “Terry”) in a room (tent-like, with various pieces of common household furniture) to draw deductions as to where a miniature toy is located in a model replica (same fabrics, materials, etc.) of said room. There were two conditions. The 17 children in the nonsymbolic condition believed that a “shrinking machine” had caused the room the become smaller, whereas the 15 children in the symbolic condition were told that the smaller room represented the larger room. The question is whether the children would be able to associate the smaller room with the larger one, thus utilizing knowledge of symbols. The hypothesis is that because the scale model of the room is so interesting an object, the children will be unable to look at it while simultaneously thinking about its relation In the symbolic task, the children were shown the large and small dolls, large and small rooms, and were told of their formal relationships. The children watched as the experimenter hid the doll somewhere in the large room, and were told that it would be in the same place in the smaller room. After 10-15 minutes, the child was asked to find the doll in the smaller room. If they were unable to find it, they were given prompts until retrieval. To succeed, the children had to realize that the rooms were related. (The trials alternated between large to small room, then small to large room, in both the symbolic and nonsymbolic trials.) In the nonsymbolic task, the children were shown a doll and a room, and watched as the doll was hidden within the room. (They were asked in about five minutes to find it, but as this was a simple memory task, there was 100% success.) In an orientation activity, the children were then shown a “machine that can shrink toys”, and given an elaborate demonstration. They were then shown 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” was then 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 only once. 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 could Children in the nonsymbolic task, however, did much better. 12 of the 17 subjects achieved three 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, Because the symbolic task requires dual representation, whereas the nonsymbolic task does not, 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 has practical implications: whether children understand what manipulables such as blocks, and other quantity-representing objects are actually representing and whether anatomically correct dolls aid investigations 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. Bibliography: DeLoache, Judy, S., Miller, Kevin, F., & Rosengren, Karl, S. (1997). The Credible Shrinking Room: Very Young Children’s Performance With Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Relations. Journal of the American Psychological Society, 8, 308-312 Word Count: 616
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