This dissertation provides a detailed, ethnographic account of three toddlers' symbolizing. Gathered through participant-observation in home settings, data include the words, gestures and play of three boys between 16 and 22 months of age. The toddle...
This dissertation provides a detailed, ethnographic account of three toddlers' symbolizing. Gathered through participant-observation in home settings, data include the words, gestures and play of three boys between 16 and 22 months of age. The toddlers' activity around naming experience, symbolizing imagined situations and playing with systems of symbols is described and analyzed through a mathematical lens. The toddlers' symbolizing then serves as a springboard for exploring mathematical symbolizing and commonalties between the two. Implications are made with respect to such issues as the action based origins of symbolizing, the ‘symbolic continuum,’ varieties of symbolic attention and of individual differences.