Grasping the nature of pictures

The role of experience in the development of pictorial competence has been the center of substantial debate. The four studies presented here help reso lve the controversy by systematically documenting and examining manual expl oration of depicted objects by infants. We report that 9-month-old infants manually investigate pictures, touching and feeling depicted objects as if they were real objects and even trying to pick them up off the page. The sa me behavior was observed in babies from two extremely different societies ( the United States and the Ivory Coast). This investigation of pictures occu rs even though infants can discriminate between real objects and their depi ctions. By the time infants are 19 months of age, their manual exploration is replaced by pointing at depicted objects. These results indicate that in itial uncertainty about the nature of pictures leads infants to investigate them. Through experience, infants begin to acquire a concept of "picture". This concept includes the fact that a picture has a dual nature (it is bot h an object and a representation of something other than itself), as well a s knowledge about the culturally appropriate use of pictures.