CHILDREN'S FUNCTIONING IN THE PICTORIAL SYMBOL SYSTEM AS DETERMINED BY RESPONSES TO A WORDLESS PICTURE BOOK (SEMIOTICS, VISUAL LITERACY, PICTURE READING, SIGNIFICATION)

The focus of this dissertation was upon children's ability to transmediate their understanding of the pictorial symbol system into oral language. Researchers (Stewig, 1978; Sinatra, 1982) have suggested that non-verbal experience and oral language are the true basics of literacy rather than reading and writing, as reading and writing are dependent upon schemata acquired through those prior levels of coding.;The stories which resulted from the telling and retelling situations were tape recorded and transcribed. The stories were described according to T-unit analysis and story grammar analysis. The T-unit analysis consisted of calculating the number of T-units and the average number of words per T-unit in each story. Also each T-unit was analyzed for the literary element(s) and level(s) of comprehension it represented, as well as for appropriateness to the pictures. The story grammar analysis consisted of placing the numbers of the T-units upon a prepared story grammar and calculating the percent in sequence.;Likeness and differences in the resulting data were compared for the telling and the retelling between individuals and among grade and reading development level averages. Results of the data analysis suggest that, while it is true that the genesis of reading and writing is in non-verbal experience and oral language, in fact signification in these two areas parallels that in reading and writing. The hypothesis emerged that just as each of the receptive and productive aspects of the language symbol system develop through experiences in any of them, it is probable that functioning in the pictorial symbol system develops through experiences with the productive and receptive aspects of the pictorial symbol system and also with experience in the language symbol system. Investigation of this will be the object of future research.;This study was designed to investigate that suggestion in the natural context of a wordless picture book. The subjects (n = 16) were asked to read aloud the story they saw in the pictures and then retell the story without the pictures. Subjects were selected according to their grade level and reading development level, as determined by teacher appraisal using the Reading Development Continuum (Cochrane, Cochrane, Scalena, & Buchanan, 1984).