Pictorial representations in adults and children

Reaction time to make same-object judgements was measured for pairs of identical pictures, picture synonyms, identical words, word synonyms, and picture-word combinations in adults and children. At all ages, synonym comparisons took longer than identical comparisons. Adults, but not children responded no faster to picture-word pairs than to picture synonym pairs. This is taken as evidence for the use of abstract pictorial information by adults but not by children. Children seem to compare two different exemplars of the same object verbally in the absence of well-integrated abstract pictorial representations.