Dear all,

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science invites you to the following talk:

Gregor Kachel (Leuphana University)

Beyond Iconicity - young children’s comprehension of symbol-referent-relationships in the graphic domain.

Children’s developing understanding of symbols in language, gesture or symbolic artefacts is central to their enculturation and demonstrates the growth of cognitive capacities that define the human mind. Language acquisition and literacy are arguably two of the most significant achievements in cultural learning. However, even prior to formal education, children may be highly competent in the graphic domain.

In a multi-study project, children were presented with a picture-book-style symbolic object-choice-task in a cross-sectional between-subjects-design. At test, they received various graphic cues by a helpful and knowledgeable cartoon agent directing them at one of two choice options over 16 trials without feedback. Participants’ binary choices were modeled as a function of their absolute age using logistic Bayesian GLMMs to determine when group performance exceeds chance. Whereas previous work on graphic communication has focused almost exclusively on iconicity as a way of creating meaning and compared performance across binned age-groups, this project investigates a wide variety of mapping relationships and allows for a continuous modelling of development across the preschool years in a highly simple, coherent and comprehensive paradigm with robust samples.

A first set of studies tested when children comprehend reference based in iconicity, pars-pro-toto, and analogies in shape (S1; N = 106), orientation and position (S2; N = 99) as well as number and size (S3, N = 99). To understand the interplay of cognitive abilities and enculturation, study 4 (N = 224, 48 to 60 months) combined the most reliable items from studies 1-3 with tasks evaluating children’s knowledge of conventional symbols, vocabulary and pragmatic abilities. An additional set of studies was devoted to when children understand arrows and markers (study 5; N = 72). Study 6 (N = 96) explored the interplay of direction and proximity in ambiguous arrow cues and study 7 (N = 48) established when children begin to generalize the tendency to an arrow-like reading to novel asymmetric shapes. Together with an additional investigation of children’s ability to interpret movement in graphic representations (study 8, N = 96), this project provides one of the most comprehensive and coherent investigations of young children’s understanding of symbols in the graphic domain to date.

Date: Wednesday, September 24th, 2025

Time: 4 pm (to 5:30 pm) CET

Venue: D002-Tiered* (QS Vienna) and Zoom (meeting ID: 969 2496 5784, passcode: 471712)

Chair: Gergely Csibra

*Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP here to get access to the lecture hall.

If you want to schedule a meeting with Gregor, please indicate your availability here by Tuesday, 12pm.

Best,

Mariem