摘要：This study examined how young children understand representational relations between referents and their representational objects. Ninety-four children aged 2- to 4.5-years of age were individually tested;firstly in the scale-model tasks,and then in the scale-map tasks. Data were analyzed both by means of Chi-Square test and by a more descriptive,micro analysis. According to the results,there were significant age differences in the understanding of representational relations,regardless of the type of representational objects. In the descriptive,micro analysis,it was found that before 3 years of age,young children have a great deal of difficulties in understanding representational relations. More importantly,young children under three seemed unable to understand representational relations,especially when the similarities as well as the differences between the representational object and the referent were very high. These results suggest that teachers of very young children need to select representational materials carefully,taking into consideration children`s understanding of representational relations.
