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Advances in Child Development and Behavior Instant Access

The document is a compilation of research on child development and behavior, edited by Robert V. Kail, featuring contributions from various experts in the field. It covers topics such as pictorial competence, cultural influences on planning skills, adolescent decision-making, and classroom competence. The book aims to provide insights into the complexities of child development through empirical studies and theoretical frameworks.
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100% found this document useful (8 votes)
181 views16 pages

Advances in Child Development and Behavior Instant Access

The document is a compilation of research on child development and behavior, edited by Robert V. Kail, featuring contributions from various experts in the field. It covers topics such as pictorial competence, cultural influences on planning skills, adolescent decision-making, and classroom competence. The book aims to provide insights into the complexities of child development through empirical studies and theoretical frameworks.
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Contributors to This Volume

Daniel R. Anderson Neil E. Berthier

Judy S. DeLoache Mary Gauvain

Erin R. Hahn Rachel E. Keen

Paul A. Klaczynski Suniya S. Luthar

Sophia L. Pierroutsakos David H. Rakison

John E. Richards Chris C. Sexton

Georgene L. Troseth Kathryn R. Wentzel


ADVANCES
IN
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
AND
BEHAVIOR

edited by

Robert V. Kail
Department of Psychological Sciences
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN 47907 USA

Volume 32

2004

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Contents

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

From the Innocent to the Intelligent Eye: The Early Development


of Pictorial Competence
GEORGENE L. TROSETH, SOPHIA L. PIERROUTSAKOS, AND JUDY S. DELOACHE
I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
II. Research on Early Pictorial Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
III. Young Children’s Understanding of Picture-Referent Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
IV. Using Video as a Source of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
V. The Development of the “Intelligent Eye”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Bringing Culture into Relief: Cultural Contributions to the


Development of Children’s Planning Skills
MARY GAUVAIN
I. Bringing Culture into Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
II. Integrating the Social and Cultural Context of Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
III. A Framework for Examining the Cultural Contributions to Cognitive Development. . . . 45
IV. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

A Dual-Process Model of Adolescent Development: Implications


for Decision Making, Reasoning, and Identity
PAUL A. KLACZYNSKI
I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
II. Dual-Process Theories of Cognition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
III. Developmental Evidence for Two Processing Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
IV. The Development of Conditional Reasoning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
V. The Development of Decision Making Heuristics and Decision
Making Competencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
VI. Development and the Belief-motivation-reasoning Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
VII. Identity Formation, Belief-biased Reasoning, and Metacognitive Dispositions . . . . . . . . . 104
VIII. Conclusions: What Develops? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
vi Contents

The High Price of Affluence


SUNIYA S. LUTHAR AND CHRIS C. SEXTON
I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
II. Problem Areas Among Affluent Youth: Suggestions in Press Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
III. Evidence of Adjustment Problems: Findings from Developmental Research . . . . . . . . . . . 130
IV. Other Research Evidence on Suburban Youth: Consistency of Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
V. The Ecological Context: Suburban Parents and Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
VI. Implications for Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Attentional Inertia in Children’s Extended Looking at Television


JOHN E. RICHARDS AND DANIEL R. ANDERSON
I. Theories of Sustained Looking at Television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
II. A Distribution Analysis of Looking at Television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
III. Quantitative Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
IV. Questions for Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Understanding Classroom Competence: The Role of


Social-Motivational and Self-Processes
KATHRYN R. WENTZEL
I. Defining Classroom Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
II. A Model of Classroom Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
III. Empirical Support for the Model of Classroom Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
IV. Future Directions and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Continuities and Discontinuities in Infants’ Representation


of Objects and Events
RACHEL E. KEEN AND NEIL E. BERTHIER
I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
II. Moving Object Studies with Young Infants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
III. Toddlers’ Reaching and Search for Objects that have Undergone
Hidden Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
IV. Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

The Mechanisms of Early Categorization and Induction: Smart


or Dumb Infants?
DAVID H. RAKISON AND ERIN R. HAHN
I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
II. Definitions and Implications: What is Categorization? What are Concepts?
What Broader Issues Apply?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
III. Theoretical Approaches to Category and Concept Development in Infancy . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Contents vii

IV. Bridging the Gap: A Domain-General Approach of the Representation


of Perceptual and Nonobvious Information in Infancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
V. Empirical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
VI. Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

Author Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Contents of Previous Volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341


This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Contributors
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors’ contributions begin.

DANIEL R. ANDERSON
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003,
USA (163)
NEIL E. BERTHIER
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003,
USA (243)
JUDY S. DELOACHE
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-
4400, USA (1)
MARY GAUVAIN
Department of Psychology, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA
92521, USA (37)
ERIN R. HAHN
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA (281)
RACHEL E. KEEN
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003,
USA (243)
PAUL A. KLACZYNSKI
Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
PA 16802, USA (73)
SUNIYA S. LUTHAR
Developmental and Clinical Psychology Programs, Teachers College, Columbia
University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 133, New York, NY 10027-6696, USA
(125)
SOPHIA L. PIERROUTSAKOS
Department of Psychology, Furman University, Greenville, SC 29613, USA (1)
DAVID H. RAKISON
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA (281)
JOHN E. RICHARDS
Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208,
USA (163)
x Contributors

CHRIS C. SEXTON
Developmental and Clinical Psychology Programs, Teachers College, Columbia
University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 133, New York, NY 10027-6696, USA
(125)
GEORGENE L. TROSETH
Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, TN 37203-5701, USA (1)
KATHRYN R. WENTZEL
Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park,
Maryland 20742, USA (213)
Preface
The amount of research and theoretical discussion in the field of child
development and behavior is so vast that researchers, instructors, and students are
confronted with a formidable task in keeping abreast of new developments within
their areas of specialization through the use of primary sources, as well as being
knowledgeable in areas peripheral to their primary focus of interest. Moreover,
journal space is often simply too limited to permit publication of more
speculative kinds of analyses that might spark expanded interest in a problem
area or stimulate new modes of attack on a problem.
The serial publication Advances in Child Development and Behavior is
intended to ease the burden by providing scholarly technical articles serving as
reference material and by providing a place for publication of scholarly
speculation. In these critical reviews, recent advances in the field are summarized
and integrated, complexities are exposed, and fresh viewpoints are offered. These
reviews should be useful not only to the expert in the area but also to the general
reader. No attempt is made to organize each volume around a particular theme or
topic. Manuscripts are solicited from investigators conducting programmatic
work on problems of current and significant interest. The editor often encourages
the preparation of critical syntheses dealing intensively with topics of relatively
narrow scope but of considerable potential interest to the scientific community.
Contributors are encouraged to criticize, integrate, and stimulate, but always
within a framework of high scholarship.
Although appearance in the volumes is ordinarily by invitation, unsolicited
manuscripts will be accepted for review. All papers — whether invited or
submitted — receive careful editorial scrutiny. Invited papers are automatically
accepted for publication in principle, but usually require revision before final
acceptance. Submitted papers receive the same treatment except that they are not
automatically accepted for publication even in principle, and may be rejected.
I acknowledge with gratitude the aid of my home institution, Purdue
University, which generously provided time and facilities for the preparation
of this volume.

Robert V. Kail
FROM THE INNOCENT TO THE INTELLIGENT EYE:
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF PICTORIAL
COMPETENCE

Georgene L. Troseth
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY,
NASHVILLE, TN 37203-5701, USA

Sophia L. Pierroutsakos
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, FURMAN UNIVERSITY, GREENVILLE, SC 29613, USA

Judy S. DeLoache
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 22904-4400, USA

I. INTRODUCTION
A. DEFINITION AND DUALITY
B. THE THREE R’S
C. THE PICTURE CONCEPT

II. RESEARCH ON EARLY PICTORIAL COMPETENCE


A. THE MANUAL INVESTIGATION OF PICTURES BY INFANTS
B. GRASPING THE NATURE OF PICTURES
C. SUMMARY

III. YOUNG CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF PICTURE-REFERENT RELATIONS


A. PICTURE ORIENTATION
B. PICTURE-REFERENT RELATION
C. SELF-REPRESENTATION
D. SUMMARY

IV. USING VIDEO AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION


A. VIDEO: NOT EQUIVALENT TO REALITY
B. POTENTIAL SOURCES OF DIFFICULTY
C. REPRESENTING SYMBOLIC RELATIONS
D. PRIOR EXPERIENCE
E. SUMMARY

V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE “INTELLIGENT EYE”

REFERENCES

1
Advances in Child Development and Behaviour q 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
R Kail (Editor)
2 Georgene L. Troseth et al.

I. Introduction

The terms in our title are borrowed, respectively, from two very influential
theorists of picture perception—the “innocent eye” from Ernst Gombrich (1969)
and the “intelligent eye” from Richard Gregory (1970). In this chapter we argue
that the process of developing an “intelligent eye” to interpret and understand
pictures is a very complex and protracted process, a process infants begin with a
relatively (but not a fully) “innocent eye.”
Understanding and using pictures is not only a complex process, but it is also a
very important one. Pictures are ubiquitous in most modern societies, as this
passage by William Ittelson so clearly illustrates:
As I sit at my breakfast table, my morning newspaper has printing on it; it has a graph
telling me how the national budget will be spent, a map trying to tell me something
about the weather, a table of baseball statistics, an engineering drawing with which I
can build a garden chair, photographs of distant places and people, a caricature
expressing what the editor thinks of a political figure, and an artist’s rendition of what
the city will look like 20 years from now … On the wall in front of me hangs an abstract
painting … All this and more, and I haven’t even turned on the TV or the computer.
(Ittelson, 1996, p. 171)

Pictures are similarly important in the lives of many very young children. In
the United States, toddlers and preschool children spend hours every week in
picture book interactions with their parents, as well as watching TV and
videos. They presumably learn a great deal from their extended experience
with various pictorial media. For example, children acquire many vocabulary
terms and concepts as a result of “reading” picture books with their parents
(Gelman et al., 1998; Ninio & Bruner, 1978; Snow & Goldfield, 1983;
Whitehurst et al., 1988). From pictures, most infants and toddlers learn many
words for entities, such as tigers and tugboats, which they have never
personally experienced, including some, such as dinosaurs, fairies, and
unicorns that they will never experience. Video is also a source of early
vocabulary learning (Rice et al., 1990; Rice & Woodsmall, 1988), and a
variety of cognitive benefits have been attributed to young children’s viewing
of educational TV programs such as Sesame Street (Ball & Bogatz, 1970;
Bogatz & Ball, 1972; Fisch, 2000; Hughes et al., 1999; Wright & Huston,
1995; Wright et al., 2001).
Our goal is to present an account of some of the early steps in the
development of what we have referred to as pictorial competence (DeLoache
& Burns, 1994; DeLoache, Pierroutsakos, & Troseth, 1996). This term is
meant to encompass the many different aspects of perceiving, interpreting,
understanding, and using pictures, ranging from the straightforward percep-
tion and recognition of simple pictures to the most sophisticated under-
standing of the conventions and techniques of highly complex ones.
From the Innocent to the Intelligent Eye 3

An enormous amount of development is embraced by this concept, as


illustrated by the following examples of relatively innocent and highly
intelligent interactions with pictorial images.
At 20-month-old Chloe’s preschool, family snapshots had been affixed to the tops of
the play tables. Spotting her father in the background of one of the pictures, Chloe
became quite upset. She pointed to the image of her father, crying, “Daddy out! Open!
Daddy out!” Unable to soothe her, Chloe’s teacher finally removed the picture from the
table and handed it to her. At first she tried to pluck her father from the picture; failing
at this, she hugged the photograph to her face. (DeLoache et al., 1996)

Now consider an astronomer interpreting images fed back to her computer


from the Hubble telescope. Although she knows that the images on her computer
screen are the result of many transformations of purely digital data, and that many
aspects of those images (such as color) are quite arbitrary, she finds them
meaningful and highly informative—perhaps even the basis for a new discovery
about the reality they so distantly represent. How does a young Chloe, confused
about the relation between a photograph and reality, become the adult astronomer
willing to accept and use a far less obvious picture-reality relation? Only via the
many steps in the complex developmental path that transforms the innocent into
the intelligent eye.

A. DEFINITION AND DUALITY

Part of the reason that the development of pictorial competence is so complex


is that pictures themselves are complex, much more so than first seems to be the
case. As James Gibson (1980) pointed out,
most people think they know what a picture is, anything so familiar must be simple.
They are wrong. (p. xvii)

Even defining what is meant by the term “picture” is surprisingly difficult;


indeed, Ittelson (1996) noted that there is no definition that is generally
accepted in psychology. In our own attempt, we have followed Ittelson’s lead
by adopting a very general definition that incorporates human intention as a
crucial feature: “A picture is constituted of marks on a delimited surface
resulting from someone’s attempt to communicate, preserve, or express an
object, event, idea, or emotion” (DeLoache et al., 1996, p. 3). The marks can
be static, as in a photograph, drawing, or painting, or kinetic, as in a video or
movie. A picture can be realistic, resembling to some degree what it stands
for, or fully abstract, with no visual similarity to what it represents. The
discussion that follows, and the research base for it, has primarily to do with
realistic pictures.
4 Georgene L. Troseth et al.

The complexity of pictures stems from their inherently dual nature, as many
theorists have recognized:
Pictures are unique among objects; for they are seen both as themselves and as some
other [entirely different] thing … (Gregory, 1970, p. 32)
A picture is both a surface in its own right and a display of information about
something else. [It] always requires two kinds of apprehension that go on at the same
time … (Gibson, 1979, p. 282–283)

This duality presents substantial challenges to the innocent eye. In the following
sections, we outline aspects of the development of pictorial competence from
infancy to adulthood.

B. THE THREE R’S

Full pictorial competence involves mastery of the dual nature of pictures, or


what we have called the “three R’s” (DeLoache et al., 1996). A picture itself is a
representation that displays information about something else—its referent. In
perceiving and interpreting a picture, the viewer sees both the representation—
the picture surface—and “sees through” the picture to its referent. In addition, the
viewer must understand something about the relation between representation and
referent.
Chloe certainly saw through the photograph of her father. What she did not do,
however, was to understand very much about the relation between representation
and referent: She confused the real referent (her father) with the representation,
apparently not understanding that the only property shared by picture and papa
was visual similarity. Our hypothetical astronomer does not understand
everything about how light striking the far away telescope becomes converted
into images for her perusal, but she has sufficient knowledge to accept that there
is a meaningful relation between the blobs and blips on her screen and events and
entities in the far reaches of space.
Pictorial competence thus involves both perceptual and conceptual
processes, with conceptual knowledge contributing in two different ways.
First, relevant conceptual representations are effortlessly activated by
perception of pictured information; perceiving their respective images led to
Chloe’s immediate recognition of her father and to the astronomer’s
recognition of particular galaxies. The second conceptual contribution
concerns knowledge about pictures (Liben, 1999). In both of our examples,
the viewers brought to bear their vastly different levels of knowledge about
pictures, leading to Chloe’s confusion and the astronomer’s accuracy. The first
has a shaky, the second a firm, grasp of what we have referred to as the
“picture concept” (DeLoache et al., 1996).
From the Innocent to the Intelligent Eye 5

C. THE PICTURE CONCEPT

1. Initial Concept
The picture concept develops through experience interacting with pictures in
the culturally prescribed manner. The concept of “picture” includes features such
as two-dimensional, non-tangible, and non-real, as well as some representation of
the contexts in which pictures typically occur and how they are used. Encounters
with pictures result in a two-part, or dual, mental representation; thus, a picture of
x would be represented as both “picture of ” and “x”.
The mental representation “x” contains what one knows about the referent x.
Seeing a picture calls to mind that information just as seeing the real entity
would do so. In Ittelson’s (1996) terms, the informational content of the picture is
“decoupled” from its source—the surface of the picture.
The other part of the dual representation—“picture of ”—indicates that this
particular x is not a real x. “Picture of ” signifies that part of the child’s mental
representation of x does not apply to this particular stimulus; specifically, all
attributes having to do with its physical reality other than its visual appearance
are null in this situation. Picture of operates like similar mechanisms proposed
for keeping non-literal representations from intruding on serious ones in
symbolic play (Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993; Leslie, 1987). Thus, representing a
stimulus as “picture of ” “x” specifies that part of the normal mental repre-
sentation of x does not apply in this particular situation.
It is the combination of the two representations—x and picture of—that tells
a viewer how to respond to a picture. The astronomer’s mature picture concept
tells her how to interact with the images on her screen. Because of Chloe’s
immature concept, her mental representation of x (Daddy) is not clearly
designated as “picture of ”, and she responds inappropriately.
What does the astronomer know that Chloe does not? In other words, what
kinds of knowledge about pictures are acquired in the course of the development
of pictorial competence?

2. Conceptual Knowledge about Pictures


Adults have an enormous store of knowledge about pictures, and children
begin to acquire some of that knowledge in their initial years of life. Surely, the
single most important thing to know about pictures is that they are not real, but
merely representations of something other than themselves. Even though
pictures effectively call to mind their real referents, they have none of the action
affordances of real objects: Hitting a photograph of a glass of milk will not cause
it to spill, nor will turning the picture upside down. In the following section of this
chapter, we consider the initial steps in the acquisition of this particular category
of knowledge, as well as lingering difficulties such as that described for Chloe.

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