Tolar Tammy D, Lederberg Amy R, Gokhale Sonali, Tomasello Michael
Department of Educational Psychology & Special Education, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302-3979, USA.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2008 Spring;13(2):225-40. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enm045. Epub 2007 Sep 7.
Early developmental psychologists viewed iconic representation as cognitively less complex than other forms of symbolic thought. It is therefore surprising that iconic signs are not acquired more easily than arbitrary signs by young language learners. One explanation is that children younger than 3 years have difficulty interpreting iconicity. The current study assessed hearing children's ability to interpret the meaning of iconic signs. Sixty-six 2.5- to 5-year-olds who had no previous exposure to signs were required to match iconic signs to pictures of referents. Whereas few of the 2.5-year-olds recognized the meaning of the iconic signs consistently, more than half of the 3.0-year-olds and most of 3.5-year-olds performed above chance. Thus, the ability to recognize the meaning of iconic signs gradually develops during the preschool years. Implications of these findings for sign language development, receptive signed vocabulary tests, and the development of the ability to interpret iconic symbols are discussed.
早期发展心理学家认为，图像表征在认知上比其他形式的符号思维更为简单。因此，令人惊讶的是，幼儿语言学习者掌握图像符号并不比掌握任意符号更容易。一种解释是，3岁以下的儿童在理解图像性方面存在困难。当前的研究评估了听力正常儿童理解图像符号含义的能力。66名年龄在2.5岁至5岁之间且此前未接触过手语的儿童被要求将图像符号与所指对象的图片进行匹配。2.5岁的儿童中几乎没有人能始终如一地识别图像符号的含义，而3.0岁儿童中有超过一半、3.5岁儿童中的大多数表现高于随机水平。因此，识别图像符号含义的能力在学前阶段逐渐发展。本文讨论了这些发现对手语发展、接受性手语词汇测试以及解释图像符号能力发展的意义。
