Children’s use of symbolic “anchors”: Color and shape in map-making activities

This research study focuses on children’s symbolic development, especially looking at color and shape as symbolic anchors in children’s expressive communication. Framed by Vygotsky’s cognitive development theory, which includes the roles of social interaction, cultural tools, and the zone of proximal development (ZPD), as well as Mead’s social interactionism, the study was designed as mixed-methods research with data collection from children’s map artifacts, map-making video recording and audio transcriptions, and a data collection matrix. By tracking the performance of 10 children (n/x = 10) in creating maps for 2 years, when they were approximately 4 years old (year 1, mean age = 52.5 months), and in Pre-K (year 2, mean age = 71 months), when they were approximately 5 years old, we examined children’s symbol use. It was observed that exposure to and engagement with relational language promotes children’s analogical reasoning. We also found that the children’s use of symbols, and especially symbolic anchors, increased overtime, demonstrating expanded perspective-taking ability. Lastly, it is our observation that children’s use of shape as a symbolic anchor seems to appear prior to children’s use of color in the emergence of symbolic representation.