researchEARLY SYMBOLIC UNDERSTANDING

How do young children use language and symbols to acquire new knowledge?

Patricia Ganea

Children, like adults, must often rely on other people to acquire information about things that are not present at the time of communication. For example, through others’ verbal input they learn about distant planets, pre-historic animals, and events that are not directly experienced. Patricia Ganea considers children’s abilities to use language to think and communicate about things that are not perceptually present. She investigates when and how infants begin to respond to speech about people and objects that are not in view. She also investigates when and how young children begin to use others’ linguistic input to structure their existing knowledge. A better understanding of the processes that limit or facilitate children’s learning from verbal input provided by other people can help us design more effective ways to teach children new information.

Patricia also investigates young children’s ability to learn and transfer new information from picture books to the real world. Surprisingly, very little is known about how much of the content conveyed in picture books can be used by children to understand the world around them. She investigates how different types of pictures (photos, drawings, cartoons) and the language used in picture books affect what children take away from the books that they are exposed to. Because picture book reading has the potential to serve as an excellent source of early knowledge about the world, Patricia develops strategies that use picture books to introduce preschool children to simple scientific information about the world. For example, she has found that preschool children can learn about colour camouflage in animals from picture books and then apply that knowledge to explain a situation involving real animals.

Patricia Ganea is an assistant professor in the department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study. Patricia’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

“My research uses a variety of experimental paradigms from developmental psychology involving behavioral measures, eye-tracking and neuroimaging techniques to understand what processes are involved in early learning.” – Patricia Ganea