This study examines how 31 middle-school children conducted multimodal analyses of video games. Over four consecutive days, students played video games for 30 minutes and then wrote written reflections about the multimodal symbols within the game and how these symbols influenced their interpretation and decision-making processes during gameplay.…

Based on the concept of iconicity, the iconicity hypothesis was emphasized for decades. The aims of this study were to explore the effect of translucency on transparency and symbol learning for children with and without cerebral palsy. Twenty children with cerebral palsy and forty typical peers participated in the study. Ten symbols with high…

This paper reports on 6-11-year-old children's "sayings and doings" (Harré 2002) as they explore molecule artefacts in dialectical-interactive teaching interviews (Fleer, "Cultural Studies of Science Education" 3:781-786, 2008; Hedegaard et al. 2008). This sociocultural study was designed to explore children's…

This article used two studies to investigate sign and symbol mediation in children aged 8-11 years. In role play, children exist at one at the same time in objective reality and their representation of reality. We cannot observe their mental representation directly, but the issue of whether signs or symbols mediate early role play is an important…

The present research examines the ability of children as young as 4 years to use models in tasks that require scaling of distance along a single dimension. In Experiment 1, we found that tasks involving models are similar in difficulty to those involving maps that we studied earlier (Huttenlocher, J., Newcombe, N., & Vasilyeva, M. (1999). Spatial…

Concludes that children in grades two through six can learn sound-symbol relationships even though they cannot define phonics terms or give examples of them. (DD)

Results of two experiments support the view that logical development can occur when there is no direct internalization of a societal language and that deaf adolescents are capable of propositional thought despite their language deficiency. (Author/WY)

Explores the role of symbolic play in the cognitive and psychic development of the normal child and describes the autistic child. Reviews a model treatment program for autism developed at the City College of New York, discussing the therapeutic role of symbolic play in that model. (Author/MJL)

Reported are research findings that (1) illustrate the importance of primary spatial orientation for children's and adults' use of symbolic spatial skills and (2) indicate the importance of the distinction between primary and secondary spatial orientation. At least two major ways exist in which humans gather and use spatial information. The…

This paper discusses links among the process of creativity, symbolization, and learning. The importance of symbolization in thinking, in school learning, in child development, and in the behavior of creative learners is stressed. (DB)

A new field of children's learning is emerging. This new field differs from the old in recognizing that children's learning includes active as well as passive mechanisms and qualitative as well as quantitative changes. Children's learning involves substantial variability of representations and strategies within individual children as well as…

The study was designed to developmentally assess the effect of relational imagery training, unitized pictorial relations, and the combination of both on the recall of noun triplets by 120 first, third and sixth graders. In the unitized picture condition, relations were imposed by the experimenter, whereas the relational imagery training condition…

Advocates the use, in the classroom, of a photograph of the planet Earth taken from space. Sees it as a powerful symbol for a unified world and its presence in the classroom as providing an expanded awareness of the unitary nature of the students' global home: one planet, populated by one human family. (KS)

The development status of the communicatory behavior of 11 autistic children (4 to 9 years old) was assessed during free play sessions under two conditions: when teachers were present to direct the children's behavior and when teachers were absent and the children played among themselves. (Author)

Reports research which reveals the difficulty children have in understanding (1) the real purpose of written language and (2) the abstract, technical vocabulary of language study and reading. (SW)