Using representations: Comprehension and production of actions with imagined objects.

Abstract

Theorists considering the development of representational thought have discussed the relationship between symbolic capacity and the ability to perform actions with objects. Previous research suggests that young children have difficulty producing actions with objects that are imagined (pantomimes); they frequently substitute a body part to represent the object involved in the action. This difficulty in pantomime production has been interpreted as a conceptual problem in the symbolic representation of actions and objects. Certain neurologically-impaired adults also produce body-part-as-object responses. In addition, some of these patients have difficulty correctly identifying symbolic object representations in pantomime comprehension tasks, and this has been taken as evidence of a deficit in the formation, and not the retrieval, of the internal representation. Little is currently known about young children's pantomime comprehension ability, and such knowledge is crucial before assuming that young children's pantomime performance also reflects a true conceptual difficulty, and not just a retrieval or production one. The current study examined the comprehension and production of pantomimes in 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds and non-neurologically-impaired adults. Results indicate that the body-part-as-object response does reflect a conceptual difficulty young children have with the symbolic representation of objects. The children, in contrast to the adults, produced significant amounts of body-part-as-object responses, and the 3-year-olds produced symbolic object pantomimes only 38% of the time. In addition, 3-year-olds correctly labelled pantomimes with body-part-as-object representations significantly more often than symbolic object pantomimes. When incorrectly identifying a pantomime in comprehension, the children in this study still frequently labelled an action that involved symbolic objects. in addition, their errors often indicated a confusion between actions that were similar in form. Therefore, the children seem to have difficulty precisely specifying the actions conceptually, and are helped by the presence of a body part in disambiguating similar actions and objects. These findings are discussed in the context of children's increasing independence from concrete, external environmental support in their knowledge about actions and objects.