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…

This study examined whether poor pointing gestures and imitative actions at 18 months of age uniquely predicted late language production at 36 months, beyond the role of poor language at 18 months of age. Data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were utilized. Maternal reports of the children's nonverbal skills and language were…

Five three-year-old children with disabilities were taught to identify rebus symbols. Children were given praise and instructive feedback. All children learned to identify all symbols. They acquired second and third sets of stimuli faster than they acquired the first set. (LB)

Toddlers were asked to find a hidden toy based on one hidden in a scale model of the room, after varying periods of delay. Subjects experiencing a longer delay on the first trial performed more poorly than those experiencing the long delay later in the trials. Results indicate the difficulty for children of keeping a symbol-referent relation in…

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…

Describes how infants and toddlers learn to use action, object, picture, and word symbols, and offers suggestions for educators and caregivers to facilitate symbol use. Discusses how adults can introduce books to young children and enhance the symbolic aspect of the care and education program. (KB)

Discusses development of symbolic thinking in toddlers as a step in language acquisition and skill development. Examines means of encouraging this symbolic problem solving, such as setting the stage for problems, helping children plan problem-solving strategies, and encouraging children in self-evaluating their skills. Examines development of…

Explores the relations among combinatorial capacities in language, symbolic play, blockbuilding, and nonsemantic action sequences within a sample of 18- to 24-month-old children, as well as assessing the developmental level of a selected subset of concepts. (HOD)

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…

This theme issue explores the development of memory and creativity in very young children. The first article, "The Guy Who Went Up the Steep Nicken: The Emergence of Story Telling during the First Three Years" (Susan Engel), describes the developmental stages of children's story telling. The reasons children tell stories and strategies for…

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)