Young Children's Knowledge of the Representational Function of Pictorial Symbols: Development Across the Preschool Years in Three Cultures

Three- to 5-year-old children's knowledge that pictures have a representational function for others was investigated using a pictorial false-belief task. In Study 1, children passed the task at around 4 years old, and performance was correlated with standard false-belief and pictorial symbol tasks. In Study 2, the performance of children from two cultural settings who had very little exposure to pictures during the first 3 years (Peru, India) was contrasted with that of children from Canada. Performance was better in the Canadian than Peruvian and Indian samples on the picture false-belief task and drawing tasks but not on the standard false-belief measure. In all settings, children passed drawing and standard false-belief tasks either concurrently with, or prior to, passing the picture false-belief task. The findings suggest that children's explicit knowledge of the representational function of pictorial symbols matures in the late preschool years and develops more rapidly in cultures that strongly promote the symbolic use of pictures early in life.