Young Children's Use of Dolls to Represent Themselves

In six studies reported here, children were asked to use the location of a sticker on one person or representation to guide their placement of a similar sticker in the corresponding location on another person or representation. This task allows for investigation of children's ability with the symbolic task faced in a clinical or forensic interview, while removing memory demands and emotional trauma. In concert with preliminary research, consistent performance demonstrated that children have a surprising level of difficulty mapping between people and dolls, but not between two dolls or two people. Additional experiments revealed that children's difficulty was due to the requirement that they reason between elements of different categories, and that the lack of categorical similarity, and not physical similarity per se seemed to be responsible. Two manipulations designed to provide support to children's reasoning, and thus potential tools for use in interviews, failed to improve the performance of very young children. Implications for practice and future directions for research are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Catherine Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• DeLoache, Judy S.

• Psychology, Clinical

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9945002

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82273