dual representation and all that entails (sorry its late!)

[orbacht]

These articles make it very clear that symbolic reasoning is a very complicated task. As adults we take for granted the ability to use symbols and abstract reasoning but clearly the process is not so simple! The key point made in both of these articles is that young children have trouble with “dual representation”. This means that they have difficulty representing an object as both its own entity and a symbol for something else.
The dual representation hypothesis supports the idea that there are two different and at least somewhat systems in place; one that categorizes objects for their own qualities and one that organizes objects based on their symbolic value. This is particularly interesting when you think about language. Words never have a value unto themselves; their only purpose is to represent abstract ideas. This would explain why children who already have a good grasp of language would have trouble in these studies.
The role of inhibition is also important to consider. The papers touch briefly on lack of inhibition being an explanation for these effects but I think it is probably a large part of the story. The more immediate and simple way to thinking about objects is to categorize them according to qualities. Most of the time that is an adaptive strategy. In order to think about objects as symbols children would need to consciously stop themselves from using a system that they have been reliant upon for the entirety of their previous lives. This can’t be easy! The credible shrinking room experiment eliminates the need to inhibit the tendency to think of objects solely according to their own properties because the objects are the same in both conditions.
Another context in which these results are interesting is the nature of opaque relationships. The intention and imitation/emulation literature we have read discusses the importance of causally clear and causally opaque information in determining strategy use. The results of these studies add another level of complexity to this issue. Opacity can take different forms. Language is one version of opacity that is relatively “easy” to figure out because it can only exist in its one form. Object however become more complicated because they can be represented as both causally clear and opaque depending on how you frame the situation. Discrepancies in children’s performance could be explained by their inability to figure out which types of strategies to use.