David Uttal
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David Uttal: Judy DeLoache, a coauthor of the study based at the University of Virginia, was my postdoctoral mentor at the University of Illinois, and we’ve talked about cognitive development for years. It turns out that studying children’s understanding of scale models is an excellent way to look at a general question: How do children come to understand symbolic relations, that one thing can stand for another? This basic ability is almost a defining characteristic of what it means to be human. We rely on symbolic skills whenever we read, look at a map, solve a mathematical problem, or read music. In each of these situations we must understand that what’s on the page or in the model stands for something else.
DU: If you check out the videos (at www.faculty.Virginia.edu/chilstudycenter/projects.html) you’ll see that they’re really trying to sit on the chair or get into the tiny car. One girl even takes off her shoes and socks in an effort to get her foot in the tiny car window. Judy did a follow-up study in which the children were encouraged to pretend play with the little car, and they did quite different things like pushing it around and making car noises, not trying to get into it.
HH: I see. They’ve already learned about size, so what’s going on here?
DU: We want to know exactly what causes them. For example, we know that children make scale errors only occasionally. Most of the time they treat miniature and large chairs differently. What sorts of things precede scale errors?
