Recent studies indicate the need to investigate the sources of toddlers' understanding of another person's pretense. The present study is a cultural and longitudinal extension of the work of Lillard and Witherington (2004), who claimed that mothers modify their behaviors during pretense and that the some of these behavior modifications help their…

Three experiments examined the relation between language acquisition and other symbolic abilities in 18- and 26-month-olds. Found that 18-month-olds spontaneously interpreted gestures, like words, as names for object categories. At 26 months, they spontaneously interpreted words as names and novel gestures as names only when given additional…

Infants' understanding of "toy model-real exemplar" relations was assessed through preferential looking and habituation tasks. Results from the preferential looking task suggest that 18-month toddlers are just beginning to demonstrate comprehension of symbolic relations between iconic models and their real object counterparts. Performance of 10-…

Examined whether toddlers would use information presented through video to solve a retrieval problem. Found that 2.5-year-olds were very successful at finding a hidden toy based on viewing a televised hiding event, but 2-year-olds were not. Substantially better performance was achieved by other 2-year-olds who either watched or believed they were…

Tested understanding of correspondence on the part of 2.5- to 3.5-year olds who watched a toy hidden in a model and tried to find an analogous toy in a room. Retrieval scores increased with increasing model-room similarity; were higher for older than younger children; and were affected by object and size similarity. (BC)