exemplars of the same thing. Note, however, that this is a weak test of iconicity. No interpretation of novel pictures at the expense of other novel pictures is required.
And again, language is an integrated part of the task.
A follow-up study by Preissler and Bloom (2007) address both these issues. In a setup where 2-year-olds were shown two novel objects and two novel drawings, children generalised from drawing to object if the drawing had been named (e.g.
“this is a whisk, can you find another one?”), but from drawing to drawing if no label had been used (i.e. “can you find me another one of this?”). Depending on context the children thus attended to either the drawing or to the picture as a piece of paper. Thus, the dual nature of pictures, as well as interpretation of simple line drawings, can be grasped by 2-year-olds if the problem is properly framed (by lan-guage).
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This dependence on naming, and thereby inattention to visual correspondence, may help explain why young children fail in scale-model tasks and when placing stickers on dolls in the absence of instruction.
Language interacts with the use of iconic information in more respects than as labels. It can for example structure a situation so that necessary relations gain sali-ence, and it can make iconicity redundant. As mentioned above, to use pictorial in-formation in model-search tasks one must be able to appreciate the relation between picture and referent in at least three different ways (DeLoache et al., 1998b). Firstly, that there exist a symbol-referent relation (e.g. that a map shows a country). Sec-ondly, how the symbol is related to the referent (e.g. that dots on the maps are cit-ies). Thirdly, one must be able to compute specific relations between symbol and ref-erent in order to use the symbol’s information about the real world (e.g. that specific dots refer to specific cities). By 3 years of age children can do this in a model-search task, but there are interesting interactions between the three levels. If children have been explicitly instructed that there exist a global model-room relation they can find a toy in a room where the furniture does not correspond to the scale model, but with less instruction it is crucial that the internal elements (i.e. the furniture) be-tween the two spaces correspond in order for the stand-for relation to be discovered and the toys be successfully retrieved (Marzolf et al., 1999). Again it seems that lan-guage relieves iconicity from its duties.
There are other means than instruction to heighten correspondence relations be-tween items. DeLoache et al. (2004a) found a robust transfer effect bebe-tween sym-bolic mediums (pictures to scale models), suggesting that training affects a general ability. However, instruction still plays a significant role in these experiments and instructions per se, not only experience with representations, also transfers between tasks (Peralta de Mendoza & Salsa, 2003).
Troseth (2003) attempted to train 2-year-olds to understand the connection be-tween video and reality in an object-retrieval task by showing hiding events simulta-neously live and on a video monitor, or by showing an adult model finding objects through video. The 2-year-olds did not become better at using video information on subsequent trials. When viewing the hiding events through a window, though, they could generally retrieve the objects.
I wonder how much faster it would have taken to teach the referential nature of photographs instead of line drawings in the Callaghan and Rankin (2002) study above. They only address one of the ways into pictorial competence. By using ab-stract drawings the scientists target the pictorial concept from the “referential side,”
while it is fully possible to first use pictures that the child already can decode, i.e.
highly realistic photographs, and then add reference onto that.
However, child researchers argue that iconicity plays a small part in acquiring the symbolic function of pictures. “One reason that iconicity should not be considered criterial in thinking about symbols is that even the most realistic color photograph expresses a point of view regarding its referent” (DeLoache, 2004). That is, there is a symbolic aspect in even highly iconic pictures. This is certainly true, but more from an outside perspective. For the child there is definitely an unambiguous “referent,”
which is the perceived object in the photograph, regardless of “expressed points of views.” Iconicity is of course central in this process and is necessary for learning the referential nature of pictures in terms of similarity and differentiation.
DeLoache et al. (2004a) for example brought differentiation into the picture when they made 2.5-year-olds train on photographs and subsequently perform bet-ter than 3-year-olds on scale-model tasks. This was a very different solution from putting the scale model behind a window to minimise its object properties. How-ever, it served a similar differentiating role. Reference was possible in the photograph condition just because it was sufficiently differentiated from the real world, but still had a striking likeness to it in virtue of being photographic. Would reference have turned up as effectively if drawings had been used instead?
Although I admit that realistic pictures are perhaps in minority in an infant’s up-bringing, and probably not the typical path towards reference, I would not exclude the possibility that iconicity can be a way into reference until it has been tested more thoroughly. Pictorial competence is after all an ability, or abilities, with a cultural foundation, and as such there can be many paths to the same end state. The typical route might not be the most effective one.