Cross-cultural and developmental trends in graphic productions

Abstract

How does space come to be used to represent nonspatial relations, as in graphs? Approximately 1200 children and adults from three language cultures, English, Hebrew, and Arabic, produced graphic representations of spatial, temporal, quantitative, and preference relations. Children placed stickers on square pieces of paper to represent, for example, a disliked food, a liked food, and a favorite food. Two major analyses of these data were performed. The analysis of directionality of the represented relation showed effects of direction of written language only for representations of temporal concepts, where left-to-right was dominant for speakers of English and right-to-left for speakers of Arabic, with Hebrew speakers in between. For quantity and preference, all canonical directions except top-to-bottom were used approximately equally by all cultures and ages. The analysis of information represented in the graphic representations showed an age trend; more of the older children represented ordinal and some interval information in their mappings. There was a small effect of abstractness of concept on information represented, with more interval information represented by children for the more concrete concepts, space, time, quantity, and preference in that order. Directionality findings were related to language-specific left-to-right or right-to-left directionality and to universal association of more or better with upward. The difficulties in externally representing interval information were related to prevalent difficulties in expressing comparative information. Children's graphic productions were compared to other invented notation systems, by children and by cultures, particularly for numbers and language.