In this video on Making Connections, Judy DeLoache of the University of Virginia has created a very clever experiment to study the emergence of Making Connections, specifically how children learn that one thing stands for or represents something else.
Much of our knowledge as adults is based on symbolic representations and the skill emerges early. Learning that a photograph of the family dog represents the real dog is the first step in learning that the squiggles on a page (writing) stands for words and that the words stand for objects or concepts. In the video, Judy DeLoache argues that theres nothing more important for the development of children than to learn about how symbols represent other things or ideas.
