Preschool children's understanding of the relationship between modality of perceptual access and knowledge of perceptual properties

Abstract

Four experiments investigated 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds' understanding that different perceptual modalities provide knowledge about different aspects of the world. In Expt 1, children were asked to choose among looking, listening and touching as means of discovering an object's colour, sound or shape, and to choose which of two puppets, each of whom had performed a different perceptual act, could provide information about an object's colour, sound or shape. In Expt 2, children were asked to direct a puppet's actions or decide what they themselves should do to acquire information about a hidden object. Four‐year‐olds performed better than 3‐ year‐olds, but neither age group performed consistently above chance for all three object properties. In Expt 3 neither 3‐ nor 4‐year‐olds chose correctly between looking and listening, but both age groups correctly chose a perceptual act, rather than a non‐perceptual act, as means of obtaining information. In Expt 4, 4‐ and 5‐ year‐olds usually attributed knowledge of colour or sound correctly following perceptual or non‐perceptual actions, but 3‐year‐olds made frequent errors. The results are interpreted as evidence that 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds understand that know‐ledge occurs in the presence of perceptual access, but do not know which aspects of knowledge are related to which modalities of perceptual access.