Journal
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Volume 92, Issue 1, Pages 205-221Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13391
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- British Academy Small Research Grant
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The use of jigsaw puzzles as a practical and natural measure of completion ability demonstrates general and pictorial metarepresentational development at the age of 4.
Jigsaw puzzles are ubiquitous developmental toys in Western societies, used here to examine the development of metarepresentation. For jigsaw puzzles this entails understanding that individual pieces, when assembled, produce a picture. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 117) completed jigsaw puzzles that were normal, had no picture, or comprised noninterlocking rectangular pieces. Pictorial puzzle completion was associated with mental and graphical metarepresentational task performance. Guide pictures of completed pictorial puzzles were not useful. In Experiment 2, 3- to 4-year-olds (N = 52) completed a simplified task, to choose the correct final piece. Guide-use associated with age and specifically graphical metarepresentation performance. We conclude that the pragmatically natural measure of jigsaw puzzle completion ability demonstrates general and pictorial metarepresentational development at 4 years.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available