Abstract
The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the development of young children's comprehension of the conceptual symbols on the Japanese version of the Pictogram Ideogram Communication (PIC-J). Ninety-three male and one hundred thirteen female infants and young children without disabilities, between the ages of 1 year 6 months and 4 years 11 months, participated in the present survey. Children were tested individually if they could point to the correct symbol after the tester named one of the symbols presented with 4 other pictograms. The 60 symbols used in the present study belonged to 3 different grammatical categories. It was found that nouns were the easiest to point to correctly. In contrast, adjective-adverb symbols were the most difficult for the children to identify. It was suggested that using simpler and more concrete words might facilitate the comprehension of some abstract symbols.
