The little chair is not for sitting on.

[pne]

via mendel:

Here's an interesting article from Scientific American which discusses how young children start to develop an understanding of symbolism, starting with a memory experiment that turned out not to examine memory at all. See also Metafilter discussion here.

Comments

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

When children develop symbolism has been a long-running area of research. I studied it in relation to sexual abuse court cases; the courts often use dolls or other objects to ask children where they've been touched, and young kids simply don't understand such demonstrations. I can't remember offhand the researcher's name whose study we read, but I think it was covered in a neat PBS-type documentary series narrated/hosted by Alan Alda.

[pne.livejournal.com]

*nods* The article discusses that, too, and says that for this reason, using dolls has generally been discredited with children under five.

[fridoline.livejournal.com]

I have read about the scale errors before that young children make. The article I read said that it was because the brain uses different areas for the assessment of function and the assessment of size, and they do not always work together yet in small children.

The brain, development, and learning are all so complex, I suppose it is never possible to tell exactly why something is the way it is.

[pne.livejournal.com]

That's possible.

The article also mentioned that the areas that store "what do I do in situation X [e.g.: chair - sit down]" and the area that is responsible for carrying out a planned action are separate. So they see a chair and activate the "sit down on chair" program (even though this is not appropriate for a small chair) but the carrying-out area does use size information (e.g. the child crouches down further, or the child takes off their show to attempt to fit their foot into a model car).