Judy S. Deloache's Experiments

The experiment performed by Judy S. DeLoache concluded how the more noticeable an object is, the harder it becomes for children to appreciate the object as a symbol for something other than what it already is, making it obviously more difficult for the younger participants of the experiment that are attracted to the object to detect its relation to the different rooms it stands for. The hypothesis concluded by Delouche led to many other intriguing ideas of what the experiment produced, like how if the attention the child has on the object minimizes, the object as a symbol increases. However, by increasing a child’s attention to an object by letting them play with it, decreases the child’s use of that object, and their performance in the experiment to find the model in the room leads to a harder understanding of it as a symbol. Children can be so intrigued by an object that they then fail to acknowledge of what the object could potentially represent.
For children at such an early stage in life trying to take in as much information as possible, having to understand to represent an object as itself as well as a symbol for something else can be a very difficult process. This hypothesis supports the idea that humans have two different systems in place where we categorize objects for their own qualities and organize based on symbolic representation. A very good example used when trying to compare DeLoach’s dual representation hypothesis in one’s everyday life is the use of language. Thinking about the way we use words, makes one realize that we use words to help represent/express abstract ideas. This makes it easier to understand why children would have a harder time understanding this concept as well as they are still learning to understand the basic meanings of