Young children's spontaneous comprehension of symbol–referent relationships in the graphic domain

Young children's communicative skills in language and gesture are well documented, yet much less is known about their -ability to interpret graphical symbols. Across three coordinated studies using identical procedures, we examined children's spontaneous comprehension of unfamiliar graphic symbols in a simple object-choice task spanning a broad range of symbol-referent relationships. Each study included four conditions in which reference was established through direct representation, part-whole relations, analogies in size, number, and form, or gestalt principles such as orientation, alignment, and figure-ground organization. Participants were 304 German-speaking children continuously sampled from age 3 to 7 (Study 1, N = 106, 51 female; Study 2, N = 99, 49 female; Study 3, N = 99, 55 female). Children reliably used direct representations to identify target objects before age 3, whereas group-level success in less iconic conditions emerged later but consistently before school entry. Across conditions involving abstract analogical correspondences, results indicate converging developments in symbolic competence around age 4. Together, these studies trace children's developing ability to understand graphical reference across a continuum from iconic to abstract and offer one of the most systematic investigations to date of how young children derive meaning from unfamiliar graphic symbols.