A four-year-old, though, can recognise that this picture shows two things.Ī consequence of understanding how pictures “work” is an improved ability to do jigsaw puzzles. To a younger child, this picture only represents whichever thing they currently see. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation” – that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.Ī drawing of a rabbit (or is it a duck?) Wikimedia Commons My earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. They realise they can make someone believe something that isn’t true. At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.įour-year-olds get much better at hide and seek. If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it.
But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.Īt about four, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour depends on what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We carried out a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. New research with my colleague Catherine Sayer shows there is a leap at four years in particular spatial skills, indicating, for example, the beginnings of the ability to read maps. Another is in spatial thinking – understanding how objects are positioned and related. One of these is a leap forward in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. At the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.
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