Running head: SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION AND COGNITIVE

Symbolic Communication and Cognitive Development:
Conclusions and prospects 
Eric Amsel
Weber State University
James P. Byrnes
University of Maryland

To appear in J Byrnes and E. Amsel (Eds.), Language, literacy, and cognitive development:  The development and consequences of symbolic communication

 Symbolic Communication and cognitive development:
Conclusions and prospects
Introduction
	The purpose of this chapter is to review the previous chapters and find the common themes regarding the nature, origin and acquisition of symbolic communication and its function for cognitive development. As presented in the preface, our broad goal is to identify the cognitive developmental consequences attributed to communicating symbolically. As previously defined, symbolic communication means understanding others or expressing oneself with symbols, whether that involves communicating linguistically, mathematically, or through another symbol system expressed in speech, gesture, notations, or through some other means. 
	While all the chapters focus on symbolic communication, we have found the task of finding common themes among them to be both challenging and fascinating. The challenges emanated from the fact that the authors examined different phenomena, used different methods, and made different theoretical assumptions about development. These differences are in addition to the one mentioned in the preface regarding the nature of communicative media -- the difference between, on the one hand , spontaneously arising communication systems such as gesture and speech and, on the other, formally developed and taught notational systems.  We begin this discussion by detailing the three ways the chapters differ (i.e., phenomena, methods, and theoretical assumptions) as a first step in making clear their underlying contribution to the issue at hand.
	The ways chapters differ
	To begin the comparative analysis of the chapters, consider the range of phenomena  through which the authors sought to examine the relation between symbolic communication and cognitive development. These phenomena differ in multiple dimensions, including the specific acquisition studied, the contexts in which the acquisitions were studied, the populations to whom the phenomena were generalized, and ages of children who were studied.  Most significantly, there is a wide enough breadth of phenomena covered in these chapters that no one will mistake the present book as an examination of a single “foundational” domain (Wellman & Gelman, 1992).  This is an important point as we try to find general relations between symbolic communication and cognitive development, not those which are embedded in a specific domain.    
	The specific acquisitions examined by the authors of the chapters range from children’s theory of mind (Budwig) to children’s acquisition of literacy and writing skills (Olson); from their processes of categorization and memory of biological and other entities (Gentner and Loewenstein) to their scientific and mathematical reasoning (Lehrer & Schauble).  In addition to the wide range of acquisitions being examined, the contexts in which these acquisitions are studied are different, ranging from parent/child dyads in the home environment (Nelson and Shaw) to peer collaborators in school (Daiute) to classroom discussions and debates (Lehrer & Schauble).  These differences are microsystems in Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) scheme of socio-cultural contexts.  But there are also mesosystem, ecosystem, and macrosystem differences across the chapters associated with the authors’ attention to very different populations.  The populations examined in the chapters included majority groups of predominately white Americans but also such unrepresented groups as deaf children (Goldin-Meadow) and minority children from inner city schools (Daiute).   Finally, the phenomena studied address development in children of a range of ages, from toddlers learning language (Nelson and Shaw and Budwig) to preadolescents inferring the properties of the evidence by which to determine the most effective memory strategies (Lehrer & Schauble).  
	Not only do these chapters vary in the phenomena in which the relation between symbolic communication and cognitive development was investigated but also in the methodologies employed by the researchers to study the relation.  In chapters that report recently- or un-published research, the designs reflect a range including experimental (Gentner and Loewenstein), quasi-experimental (Goldin-Meadow, Lehrer & Schauble), observational (Nelson and Shaw, Budwig), and ethnographic (Daiute) studies. The time designs by which development was assessed also vary across the chapters and include cross-sectional (Gentner and Loewenstein), microgenetic (Budwig), short-term longitudinal (Lehrer & Schauble), and longitudinal designs (Daiute). 
	Finally, the chapters vary in terms of the theoretical assumptions of the authors regarding the nature of change and development.  A number of chapters include references to Vygotsky and other socio-cultural theorists, for whom development involves a socialization into cultural forms of thought.  Olson aptly describes this process as an “outside-in” account of development. In these chapters, Vygotsky’s account of development is extended to focus upon the nature and significance of individual subjectivity and imagination in the socialization process (Daiute).  Also, the semiotic context is carefully scrutinized to examine how the child’s relations between words, objects, and concepts become coordinated with a parent’s relation (Nelson and Shaw).  
	In addition to Vygotsky’s notions of an outside-to-inside view of the developmental process, many of the authors examined the inside-to-outside constructivist processes of development championed by Piaget and others. For example, Olson refers to the role of inside-to-outside constructivist processes in accounting for development of writing as a notational system.  He writes, “I am enough of a Piagetian to hold that the outside-to-inside view of   ‘internalization’ is flawed; rather, the child has to construct his or her own knowledge, even if that knowledge is already present in some sense in the culture” (ms p. 5).  The framework is extended to examine the factors associated with the process by which symbolic communication skills are acquired. For example, Budwig investigated parent/toddler dialogues to understand the nature of the inferences children make about the forms and functions of mental state expressions. Gentner and Loewenstein demonstrated the role played by acquiring domain-specific linguistic and conceptual knowledge in the development of memory and categorization processes.  Finally, Lehrer & Schauble discussed the role of inferential processes not only in constructing a socially accessible notational system for coding data but also in exploiting mathematical properties of the notational system for analyzing the data.  
	The diversity of papers in this book demonstrates that a focus on the nature, origin and acquisition of symbolic communication and its function for cognitive development need not specify a particular acquisition to be studied, a methodology to be employed, or theoretical assumption to be adopted.  However, the breadth of the contributions raises the possibility that the only common themes about symbolic communication and cognitive development which can be identified may be empty platitudes about how symbolic communication influences all aspects of cognitive development. To avoid mere platitudes but to respect the variability in accounts of children’s development found in the chapters, we first review a number of conceptual issues associated with role of symbolic communication in cognitive development.  These issues concern (a) the nature and function of symbols used in communication and (b) how forms of symbolic communication impact thought. The authors’ arguments on these matters will be reviewed and the commonalities between the positions identified. Performing this exercise will involve reviewing psychological processes alluded to by the authors in their account of children’s acquisition of various symbol systems and ways of communicate with them.  Traditional theoretical accounts of the nature and development of these symbolic communicative systems (c.f. Byrnes & Gelman, 1991) will be discussed as will alternative models proposed to account for how symbolic communication impacts cognitive development.  
	With this preliminary work completed, we will co-opt Scholnick’s (this volume) metaphor of “partnerships” between language thought and notation to further explore the different ways the authors account for cognitive development through symbolic communication.  In particular, we will examine different kinds of partnerships which children form in different communicative contexts.  We take these different contexts to be associated with and categorized by different forms of representational “partnerships.” Central to our analysis is that different partnerships are forged in these different communicative contexts.   While not meant to be exhaustive, distinguishing between these communicative contexts will be central to our account of how and why symbolic communication influences cognitive development throughout life. 
	In summary, to find conceptually interesting commonalities between the chapters, the authors’ positions on the nature, origin and acquisition of symbolic communication and its cognitive developmental significance will be analyzed and synthesized.  The analysis will be based on central philosophical, psychological, and developmental issues associated with communicating symbolically. The synthesis will draw on Scholnick’s analysis of development in terms of metaphor of a partnership -- relations between representational systems among agents who communicate symbolically in particular contexts. The partnerships born in these communicative contexts, we believe, are the fertile ground in which cognitive development flourishes.
Issues in the Study of Symbolic Communication
	While symbolic communication was a topic of discussion in each chapter, there were a variety of ways in which authors characterized the nature of symbols and symbol systems.  The same holds true for the impact of symbolic communication on thought. In this section we review these different characterizations. The goal is to find a common language for comparing and contrasting the various proposals as well as to provide a framework for understanding the different accounts of the processes of acquiring and contexts for communicating with symbol systems. 
	The nature of symbols and symbol systems
	At the heart of any account of symbolic communication must be a recognition of precisely what is meant by symbols and communicating with them. A review of each chapter reveals both agreements and disagreements in this regard. To highlight these agreements and disagreements and to develop a common language for talking about symbols we use the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce (1897/1955; Deacon, 1997; Hawkes, 1977), to whom a number of authors made reference.  To Peirce, semiosis is the process of communicating with signs, that is, the process by which a sign signifies.  “A sign or representamen “stands for something (its object); it stands for something to somebody (its interpretant); and finally it stands for something to someone in some respect (this respect is called its ground)” (Hawkes. p. 126-127).  For Peirce this relation captures the underlying logic of thought itself.  Deacon (1997) wrote that “Peirce....rephrased the problem of mind in terms of communication, essentially arguing that all forms of thought (ideas) are essentially communication (transmission of signs), organized by an underlying logic (or semiotic as he called it) that is not fundamentally different for communication processes inside or outside of the brain.” (p. 70). 
	Essential in Peirce’s notion of thought is that the elements through which communication is carried (i.e., signs) are distinct from the concepts or ideas which are communicated.  Peirce further distinguishes between three types of signs based on the ground or the relation between the sign and the object: An Icon functions as a sign by virtue of features of itself which physically correspond to its object; an Index functions as a sign by virtue of a having a factual, correlative, or causal relation with its object; and a Symbol functions as a sign by virtue of an arbitrary but habitual or conventional association between itself and its object. Piaget (1951) and many other scholars have relied heavily on this seminal analysis. Deacon (1997) noted the sign-object relations considered by Pierce are an exhaustive inventory of the classic accounts of the processes by which ideas are associated:  similarity for icons; contiguity or correlation for indexes; and law, causality, or convention for symbols.  In this sense then, the trichotomy between icons, indexes, and symbols is based on the act of interpreting signs and objects, not on intrinsic or formal properties of the signs themselves. 
	Pierce’s semiotic theory can be used to understand and synthesize the range of views about the nature of the sign-object relation discussed by the authors of the chapters. For example, according to Nelson and Shaw’s account of language acquisition, words become symbolic for the child when they are used “to represent a state of the world that is not present in the immediate environment, and when they are used with the intention of communicating that representation to another” (ms p. 10).  This point emphasizes what Peirce claims is unique about symbolic communication: It is the communication of a state of affairs as represented. It is not possible for state of affairs as represented to be the topic of a conversation when communicating with iconic or indexical signs.  Such non-symbolic signs do not represent states of affairs, only serving to remind one of (iconic signs) or be associated with (indexical signs) the states which are the topic of communication.  As a result, the topic of conversation in these cases may be a sign itself or the state of affairs itself, but it is not the state as represented.  
	According to Nelson & Shaw, to communicate about a state of affairs as represented, a symbol must relate not only to objects in the world (reference) but also to concepts (denotation) and other symbols (sense). They labeled these relations between the symbols, objects referred to, and concepts denoted as the “semiotic triangle.”  These relations serve to account for constraints on the meaning of a given symbol imposed by other symbols in sentences or semantic fields. It is important to note that only symbolic signs can be so constrained (see Deacon, 1998).  While there will be more to say about this in the next section, suffice it to say here that communicating about a state of affairs as represented opens up the world of conventional representations that could not be opened unless one was communicating with symbols. In this way symbols are social, shared, and form a system, as Nelson and Shaw emphasized in their paper.
	Nelson and Shaw’s examination of sign-object relations in oral language parallels Olson’s and Daiute’s analyses of sign-object relations in written language.  The meanings carried by written and oral signs are social in the sense that they are about the social-cultural world, interpersonally shared in the sense that they are used for communicating with others, symbolic in the sense that they are about states of affairs as represented, and form a system in the sense that they derive from relations to other symbolic signs.  However, it is important to note that written, unlike oral, language is a notational system. Notational systems are intentionally created external inscriptions or depictions that stand for and communicate about aspects of reality. Notational systems are both a medium for the expression of meaning and an outcome of material human activity (i.e., a cultural artifact). While songs and spoken words are not examples of notational systems, musical scores and written words are.  However, not all notational systems are symbolic in the sense that they are about states of affairs as represented (see Tolchinsky-Landsmann & Karmiloff-Smith, 1992, for a discussion of the distinguishing factors which make notational systems symbolic).  Notably, drawing fails the symbolic notation test, thereby creating a challenge for children to distinguish characteristics of symbolic and non-symbolic notational systems (as seen in one 5-year-old who insisted that he was drawing a “lower-case heart”).
	The agreement between Nelson and Shaw, Olson, and Daiute regarding the nature of the sign-object relations, despite their focus on oral or written forms of symbolic communication, points to the fact that specification of sign-object relations may remain the same when different forms of symbolic communication are examined.  However, it is also true that sign-object specifications may be different when the same symbolic communication forms are examined.  This is precisely a source of contrast between Budwig and Nelson and Shaw. The sign-object relation in oral language is treated as symbolic to Nelson and Shaw but as indexical to Budwig.  Budwig’s indexical view of the sign-object relations in oral language allows for expressions to be treated as literally linking or pointing to a situation, not symbolically referring to it. To Budwig, “... language does more than refer to the world; it also suggests that there is a specific linkage between various language functions and linguistic forms.” It is Budwig’s point that an indexical view of language makes form-function linkages explicit in a particular context such that language development can be viewed as “changing relations between linguistic forms and language functions.”  Thus, to her, the indexical view of language is central for “routine communicative practices” to become “grammaticalized”
	While we do not intend to deny any differences between Budwig’s and Nelson and Shaw’s theories of children’s language acquisition, the difference associated with how the sign-object relation is conceptualized may be more apparent then real. Returning to Peirce for a moment, he does not claim that there is necessarily a mutual exclusivity between signs whose ground is iconic, indexical, or symbolic.  Rather the set is considered by Peirce (Hawes, 1977 pp. 129-130, italics in original) as 
...three modes of a relationship between sign and object, or signifier and signified which co-exist in the form of a hierarchy in which one of them will inevitable have dominance over the other two.  As Jakobson observes, we can have symbolic icons, iconic symbols, etc., and the nature of a sign’s ultimately dominant mode will depend on its context...  Thus a traffic signal may, in terms of epistemology, be said to combine index (pointing to a situation and calling for immediate causally related action) and symbol (red in our society signals ‘danger’, ‘stop’; green signals the opposite, and these arbitrarily related colours are binarily opposed by the traffic signaling system, as symbols).
So, it may be the case that Nelson and Shaw and Budwig only differ in their recognition of this power of the context to elicit signs’ dominant modes. The indexical mode of a sign may be dominant in contexts when new grammatical forms are first being learned, as when toddlers first learn mental state expressions. Budwig gave an example of a child’s dialogue with her mother (ms p. 16) in which the signs served to index rather than to represent a state of affairs.
	Child: (tries to open container, fails) My open that
	Mom: What?
 	Child: My open that, mommy (handing container to mom),
	Mom: Wanna open that?
	Child: Yeah. 
	Mom: Opens container
	According to Budwig, the expression “My open that!” invoked a desire to bring about change in the situation rather than a genuine reference to desire as a mental state. That is, her communication indexed a situation, but did not refer to a state of affairs as represented.   Nelson and Shaw identified the latter but not the former as being essential to a symbolic use of words.  In response, the mother rephrased the expression, clarifying it so there would be a genuine reference to the represented mental state   In this sense, the dialogue was quasi-symbolic as one partner in the dialogue (Mom)  symbolically interpreted the other partner’s non-symbolic communication (Child).  As Nelson and Shaw (ms p. 11) might characterize it, the mother sought a correspondence in the semiotic super triangle relation between her own and the child’s symbols, concepts, and objects.
	Thus, it seems that a sign’s status as symbolic depends on contextual factors that permit its symbolic mode to dominate.  One such factor is whether a grammatical form is sufficiently developed to permit the symbolic mode to dominate. Unless the child has learned a grammatical form, the signs used in the expression are not symbolic.  Such a contextual constraint on symbolic signs is often short-lived and local, being specific to the particular grammatical form to be learned.  In contrast, other contextual factors influencing whether the symbolic mode dominates may be more general and permanent in scope, that is, extended in time and across situations.  For example, Goldin-Meadow examined gestures as signs and argued that the sign-object relation is grounded differently depending on whether gestures were used as a primary communicative outlet (as they are by congenitally deaf children whose hearing parents did not expose them to sign language) or as a secondary outlet (as they are by hearing children of hearing parents who have oral language as their primary outlet). 
	Gestures used as secondary communicative outlets convey information iconically by resembling their objects (as a hand gesture depicting the eastern seaboard of the USA), or indexically, by literally pointing to their objects.  According to Goldin-Meadow, such gestures served to give “voice” to thoughts which may be “inchoate or untamed” and inexpressible through the conventional (i.e., primary) communicative outlet. 
	In contrast, when gestures are used as the primary communicative outlet (by deaf children of hearing parents who were not exposed to sign language), the evidence suggests that their dominant mode is symbolic.  Goldin-Meadow found that, when appropriated for communication, the iconic gestures have “language-like” (ms. p. 9) properties, including morphological, semantic, and grammatical properties that, for most of the children she studied, were consistent with ergative oral languages.  The dominant mode of these gestures is symbolic in Nelson and Shaw’s sense in that they intentionally communicate actions and objects as represented (i.e, gesture-to-world relations) and form systems with other gestures (gesture-to-gesture relations).  The gestures of deaf children unexposed to sign language and living with hearing parents are also social and shared, but not in the same way as Nelson & Shaw characterized the signs of hearing children living with hearing parents. Goldin-Meadow notes that because their hearing parents use gestures non-symbolically with their deaf children, the children are producers but not receivers of language-like gestures. Indeed, it is likely that no one in the children’s social world uses language-like gestures to interpret the social world for them. Nonetheless, the deaf children’s language-like gestures may be social and shared in sense that the gestures are not the child’s own, but are refinements of the ones they first encountered from their parents or others in their social environment.  Moreover, as suggested by Goldin-Meadow, the message that hearing parents express with non-symbolic gestures are encoded symbolically by the deaf children.  The parent-child interaction described by Goldin-Meadow parallels the interaction described by Budwig between hearing parents and their children who learning a grammatical form.  In such cases, one person in the dialogue.(i.e., the hearing parent or the deaf child) is interpreting symbolically the non-symbolic expressions of the other (i.e, the  hearing child learning a grammatical form, the hearing parent using an iconic gesture).  Such an interaction was characterized as quasi-symbolic and as a consequences of such an interaction is a growing coordination of the child’s and parent’s symbols, concepts, and objects in the super semiotic triangle (Nelson & Shaw).  From this analysis, it seems that when signs are the primary communicative outlet for a person, whether expressed gesturally or orally, the signs have similar properties; they not only become symbolic and form a system but also they are social and shared..  
	In summary, the dominant mode of a sign can be affected by two types factors:  (a) those which have a shorter-term, less stable, or less permanent influence (i.e., learning to use a particular grammatical form) and (b) those which have longer-term, more stable or more permanent influence, (i.e., a sign’s use as a primary or secondary communicative outlet).  These factors affecting the dominant mode of signs apply not only to oral and written language but also to other types of symbol systems as well.  Lehrer and Schauble found that young children initially intended to create inscriptions (which they define as drawings, diagrams, physical models, read-outs from instruments, and mathematical expressions) that were iconic in nature, sharing the physical properties with the object being inscribed.  For example, they found that first graders created inscriptions for plant heights at different times by, at each time, cutting green paper strips to the exact height of the plant stem. The iconicity of the inscriptions lies in the inscriptions being the same color, shape, and height as the object being inscribed. They also found that some older children treated histograms indexically, as correlated to the objects being inscribed.  Some fifth graders sought to determine the correspondence between individuals and their inscription in the histogram (marked with an “x”).  The indexicality lies in the identity the students sought between individual markings in the histogram and the individual students whose performance was being depicted. 
	Nonetheless, in both cases Lehrer and Schauble report that the symbolic mode of the inscriptions became dominant and the children were able to conceptually appreciate and  interpersonally communicate about the more abstract properties of reality represented by the inscriptions. In the case of the younger children, the children began to discuss occasions where their plants grew faster and slower by computing the size of the difference between the lengths of green paper.  This shift in dominant mode took trial and error, scaffolding by a talented teacher, and the insight of a student, but was accomplished over a relatively short time period. In the case of the older children, those with practice and experience with histograms over the course of their schooling were able to shift from iconic to symbolic mode of inscriptions and even entertain ways to measure central tendency and spread.  They were eventually able to work out techniques to compare different histograms representing different experimental conditions --in essence, they ran an “intuitive t-test”.  But students without previous school-based experiences with histograms of distributions had much more difficulty gleaning information from it.  Children proposed “senseless algorithms” (ms. p. 18) for computing central tendency and were selectively considering only aspects of the data.  Lehrer and Schauble note that, conceptually, these students lacked mathematical resources to fully exploit symbolic aspects of the inscription.
	To summarized this section of the review, signs can bear a number of different kinds of relations to objects, including iconic, indexical, and symbolic.  There appears to be nothing about the physical properties of the signs that specifically constrain the nature of the sign-object relation. Speech was presented as indexical and symbolic, gestures as iconic and symbolic, and inscriptions as iconic, indexical, and symbolic.  A symbolic sign-object relation is necessary for communicating about state of affairs as represented because non-symbolic signs do not represent states of affairs, but rather serve to be reminiscent of or associated with the states. But, as noted earlier, there is no exclusivity of a sign’s ground as iconic, indexical or symbolic, and any given sign may shift in its dominant mode. Contextual factors constrain whether the symbolic mode of a sign becomes dominant.  Some of these factors may be short-term and easily overcome, while others are more permanent. 
	  This review offers an alternative, perhaps more tractable question which can be asked about the nature and origin of symbolic communication. Instead of asking static questions about when children use symbols or demonstrate symbolic thought, we can ask dynamic ones about factors influencing how signs’ symbolic mode becomes dominant in a context.  The dynamic questions suggest that signs, plentiful in children’s environments, can have a variety of different types of meaning for them.  Indeed, a number of the authors in the present volume warn us not to jump to conclusions about a person’s use of particular signs in a context, since the signs’ meanings can vary.  For example, Nelson & Shaw caution that the mere fact that children use words in a context should not lead to the conclusion that they are being used symbolically; they may be used by children non-symbolically, either without meaning or as indexing a situation.  A similar warning is issued by Goldin-Meadow in that similar-looking gestures may be used to communicate iconically or symboliccally.  Posing the problem of symbol use dynamically, as one of identifying a shift in dominant mode, makes analyses of children’s non-symbolic uses of signs more pertinent and relevant to understanding their symbol use.  Nelson & Shaw’s and Budwig’s analysis of the sequences in the development of linguistic expressions are cases in point, as is Lehrer and Schauble’s analysis of the sorts of misunderstandings students had in coming to understand inscriptions as symbolic signs.   
	The work of many of the authors in this book offers insight into factors influencing the shift in interpreting a sign’s dominant mode from non-symbolic to symbolic.  But much more work is necessary to examine whether and which kinds of factors influence symbolic dominance across the sign types of words, gesture, and inscription. It seems likely that biological-evolutionary, cognitive-developmental, and socio-cultural influences are at work together to realize the interpretative shifts. For example, although the creation of some elemental grammatical categories, essential to communicate symbolically, seems to be brought by the child to the language learning situation (Goldin-Meadow), the comprehensive system of linguistic forms created must assuredly to be related to socio-cultural factors (Goldin-Meadow, Olson, Budwig, and Nelson & Shaw).  This may be the most productive consequence of asking dynamic instead of static questions about the nature and origin of symbolization: Factors which have been treated as antagonistic when the problem of symbolization is treated statically, are seen as interrelated and interactive when treated dynamically.
	The significance of symbolic communication for cognition.
	In this section, we review the authors’ specific claims about the cognitive and developmental significance of communicating symbolically in hopes of arriving at general conclusions regarding its impact.  As previously discussed, the chapters in the book represent a range of different phenomena, methodologies, and theories, so the conclusions will have a great deal of territory to cover.  For example, the conclusions will have to capture the cognitive consequences of all the forms of symbolic communication considered by the authors (e.g., oral and written language and other notational systems) on various levels of cognition, from lower-level perceptual and memorial functioning to higher-order reflective and metacognitive processes. The conclusions will also have to apply to symbolic communication about a range of different types of represented states of affairs, be they concrete or abstract; real or imagined; having existed in the past, existing in the present, or possibly existing in the future. Finally, the conclusions will have to address the theoretical significance of symbolic communication for theories of cognition (i.e., Sapir-Whorf and other theoretical views on language and thought) and development (i.e., Vygotsky and other theoretical views on cognitive development as internalized language).
	 As noted previously, communicating symbolically involves intentionally communicating states of affairs as represented. To Peirce, the formation of symbolic signs to represent objects implicates the more sophisticated of the classical mechanisms for the association of ideas, including law, causality, and convention. The development of these mechanisms is a necessary condition for symbolic communication, so they cannot themselves be cognitive consequences.  However, when successful, symbolic communication involves simultaneously communicating the states of affairs as represented and the status of the states of affairs as being represented by conventional symbols.  For example, a parent - child dialogue about a school bus involves both participants intentionally communicating about a state of affairs as represented (i.e.. the word school bus designates the concept of school bus and refers to school buses in the world) and an appreciation that the states of affairs are ones which can be referred to with conventional symbols. 
	This latter point is as unique about communicating with symbolic signs as is the former one.  When communicating successfully with iconic and indexical signs, states of affairs are brought to mind by virtue of the signs’ correspondence (iconic) or connection (indexical) to the states.  In such cases, states of affairs are brought to mind without necessitating an additional appreciation of the sign’s relation to the object or the object’s relation to the sign. In contrast, successful symbolic communication involves the sender and receiver understanding not only that symbols designate concepts and refer to states of affairs, but also that states of affairs that are referred to are ones that can be conventionally symbolized. 
	Nelson and Shaw make this point about what gets expressed in symbolic communication in even the simplest cases of a child comprehending and expressing common nouns that name objects in the world (e.g., understanding or using the word “dog” in referring to new instances of dogs and not other things).  Although the child may have had experiences with--and even a preverbal (i.e., non-linguistic) concept of--dogs prior to her production and reception of the word “dog,” learning the label adds something to children’s conceptual understanding: Dogs are objects which can referred to by a symbol. According to Nelson and Shaw, such a symbol serves as the pivotal point by which the child’s denoted conceptualization of dogs is refined to correspond to the adult’s conceptualization.  Nelson and Shaw invoke the semiotic super triangle relation between the parent’s and child’s word (symbol), the concept it denotes (conceptualization), and the object to which it refers.  A common word (i.e., “dog”) is the basis for aligning the entire super triangle so that the same word expressed or comprehended by child or parent will donate the same concept and refer to the same object.  By virtue of being the topic of communication with symbolic signs rather than with non-symbolic signs or no signs at all, the child’s world of dogs becomes more conventional, stable, continuous, and context-general.  
	From the forgoing discussion, we can discern that use of symbolic signs as object labels (basic level object category terms) has at least two cognitive consequences.  First, there is an expansion of the child’s understanding of the parts of the world that can be conventionally symbolized and conceptualized.  That is, more of the basic objects of the world has a name. Second, the child can now select from systems of symbols the one(s) that would allow for more precise and effective communication.  Many more symbols are available to choose just the right one to communicate about an particular aspect of the world.  These two consequences are related -- by expanding the world as symbolized and conceptualized, children are better able to be more effective and precise in communicating about a given aspect of the world. 
	These cognitive developmental consequences appear to be unique to symbolic communication as they are not associated with non-symbolic communication. Goldin-Meadow outlined the cognitive significance of the gestures produced by hearing children who otherwise use oral language as a primary communicative outlet.  Such gestures are non-symbolic and function to (a) communicate thoughts or strategies on tasks which are not or can not be verbally expressed, (b) support memory for expressed ideas (although whether at encoding, retrieval, or both is unclear), and (c) lower the cognitive demands on the primary communicative outlet. While expressing thoughts, supporting memory, and offloading cognitive demands may well be cognitive consequences of the use of any type of sign (i.e., iconic, indexical, or symbolic), they are not unique to communicating with symbolic signs. Indeed, the cognitive consequences of non-symbolic gestures support neither of the consequence we claim accrue by virtue specifically of symbolic communication.
	These two consequences of symbolic communication go beyond merely improving the process of communication itself.  Communicating with symbols has the general cognitive consequence of offering a new way to represent the world, one which is organized around a system of shared symbols with conventional meanings. The communicative function of such conventional representational systems requires not only that symbols be distinguished from and related to each other within a given system but also that the symbols are distinguished from and related to those of other representational systems. This latter point was made by Nelson and Shaw with regard to basic level object nouns and concepts; there is a coordination between young children’s prelinguistic conceptual representations and semantic representation during language development. 
	An emphasis on the communicative function of representational systems, with its focus on coordinating shared symbols within and between multiple representational systems, can provide a new perspective with which to challenge traditional views of language.  For example, an alternative to traditional claims of an autonomous and innately constrained grammar holds that  its acquisition is just a case of the child’s socialization into communicative practices of a community of speakers (Tomasello, 1998 and Budwig, this volume and Nelson and Shaw, this volume).  By virtue of rejecting an autonomous and innately constrained grammar, this communicative perspective could also be a basis for challenging traditional views of cognitive processing.  Instead of the traditional assumptions that cognition is the rule-governed manipulation of mental symbols (i.e., rules of grammar operating on “words”), the present communicative view of language may be compatible with Connectionism, which holds that mental rules do not actually exist but are immanent in the processing of non-symbolic (i.e., phonemic) content (Collier, 1998).
	Despite  its compatibility with alternative accounts of language and cognition, acknowledging the importance of symbolic communication for cognitive development does not necessitate the rejection of traditional assumptions.  Indeed, even the two cognitive consequences being claimed for symbolic communication (expansion of the world as conventionally symbolized and conceptualized and precision in the aspects of the world communicated about ) may arise without true symbolic dialogues; that is, dialogues between partners who are both expressing themselves symbolically.  Budwig notes that hearing parents symbolically interpret their hearing children’s indexical expressions and Goldin-Meadow points out that deaf children (unexposed to sign language) symbolically interpret their hearing parents iconic gestures.  In both cases there is a quasi-symbolic dialogue in which one of the two partners in a dialogue interpret symbolically the non-symbolic expressions of the other partner.  The consequences of quasi-symbolic dialogues according to Budwig is that the child learns appropriate linguistic forms for particular functions which Nelson and Shaw characterize as involving the coordination of the super semiotic triangle between objects, words, and concepts of parents and children.  From this perspective the quasi-symbolic dialogues promote both  linguistic and cognitive growth. Goldin-Meadow concludes that even these quasi-symbolic dialogues are not required for deaf children’s cognitive achievements as inventing semantic and grammatical categories.  According to her, these achievements must arise “de novo,” without support of a conventional language model in the environment.  
	While we acknowledge that some cognitive consequences of symbolic communication may arise without true symbolic dialogues, we wish to explore what consequences fall out of such dialogues.  We propose that true symbolic dialogues are important to conventionally symbolizing and conceptualizing abstract or hypothetical aspects of the world and precisely communicating about those aspects.  This is not to suggest that the deaf children studied by Goldin-Meadow do not symbolically communicate about abstract and hypothetical aspects of the world or that prelinguistic children can not conceptualize abstractly or hypothetically.  Our claim is only that without engaging in true symbolic dialogues such communication may be particularly difficult.  Gentner and Loewenstein and Nelson and Shaw argue that the more concrete aspects of the world are stable and salient, and concepts about them are readily learned and communicated about.  In contrast, abstract or hypothetical aspects of the world are less stable and salient, requiring symbolic dialogues to stabilize and highlight them in order for children to conceptualize and communicate about them.
	Nelson and Shaw and Budwig exemplify this claim by pointing to the importance of symbolic dialogues (or Wittgensteinian “language games,” as Nelson & Shaw refer to them) in the development of conceptualizations and expressions of mental states. In her chapter, Budwig noted the development of toddlers’ conceptualization and expression of mental states, demonstrating the struggle young children have “grammaticalizing” routine parent/child communicative practices regarding desire. The functions of the forms that the toddlers expressed provide unique views of their developing conceptualization of desire.  Nelson and Shaw further demonstrated that even by 3 and 4 years of age, when children learn grammatical forms for expressing such mental states as “believe” and “know,” they are still working out the meanings of and conceptual relations between the terms.
	Gentner and Loewenstein argues strongly that true symbolic dialogues regarding relational terms have critical consequences for children’s abstract relational thinking.  Gentner and Loewenstein provides evidence of 4 ways in which using relational words affect abstract relational thinking (ms. pp. xx-xx). First, upon hearing relational terms, children direct their perceptual and encoding processes to seek the referred-to relational patterns (p. xx).  Second, the relational pattern is then encoded symbolically so that the relational term preserves the pattern (pp. xx).  Third, the relational term and the pattern it encodes may then be input for further metacognitive analysis so that the a system of relational terms is forged (pp. xx). Finally, with a system of relational terms by which to encode new patterns, a uniform encoding and transfer of relational patterns is achieved (4, pp. xx).  Thus, dialogues about new relational terms opens up for children a world of conventional symbols referring to relational patterns as represented, supporting their perception, encoding, memory, transfer, and precise reference to those patterns.
	Symbolic dialogues promote children’s understanding of relations and mental states by providing them with tools for representing, conceptualizing, and precisely communicating about these more abstract aspects of the world.  Such cognitive consequences also accrue for symbolic dialogues using notational systems for writing and reading.  Written letters, words, and sentences are everywhere in a child’s environment, but symbolic dialogues with a notational system are not achieved until the child plays the role of either a writer or reader; an author or audience.  Olson stressed the significance of acquiring a notational system for reading and writing, claiming that it “is not just a matter of improved storage and communication of information, but a new form of representation, thought, and consciousness.” (p . 4). As evidence, Olson discusses the consequences of a notational system for writing and reading for representing, conceptualizing, and precisely communicating about a particularly abstract aspect of the world -- speech itself.  For Olson, a writing system is a “notation for speech,” involving children acquiring the symbols representing speech and thereby conceptually reconstructing it.   Letters are learned as symbols that children use to represent, conceptualize, and communicate about their own and others’ speech sounds.  Sets of these letters, symbolized by the word “word” are also used to represent, conceptualize, and precisely communicate about segments of their own and others’ speech. 
	Olson points to the struggle children have conceptualizing the writing system as notations symbolizing their own speech.  He characterizes the process as “not a natural development; it is a consequence of learning to deal with a particular writing system (pg. 12)”.  That is, as a result of acquiring a notational system for reading and writing, children have new symbols to represent, conceptualize, and communicate about their speech. 
	Olson shows that oral language is conceptually transformed as a consequence of symbolic written dialogues.  In contrast, Daiute shows how written language is transformed as a consequence of symbolic oral dialogues. Daiute provides evidence of the impact of teacher-student and student-student oral dialogues on mastery of such concepts associated with written texts as “story beginnings,” “paragraphs,” and “details.”  Perhaps it comes as no surprise that teacher - student oral dialogues promoted children’s writing performance, after all, the dialogues were dominated by teachers who engaged in cognitive control discourse (i.e., question asking, instruction, planning). What is more fascinating was the impact of student-student oral dialogues on the creation and composition of narratives. Although the dialogues were riddled with discourse which many may characterize as off-task (i.e., play, affect, making personal connections, etc.), they impacted narrative details. Daiute argues that such discourse, which she labels as social-relational, provides a symbolic dialogic basis for, among other things, the creation of shared fictional worlds about which a story was written. Like the self-directed dialogues so important in preschoolers’ sustaining symbolic play (c.f., Amsel, 1999; Berk, 1994; Vygotsky, 1978), the third- and fourth grade children’s dialogic construction of a virtual reality was sustained so that it could become a topic of narrative composition.  Thus, in the service of writing, symbolic dialogues between students supported a shared representation of a hypothetical aspect of the world -- a fictional or virtual reality -- and permitted children to conceptualize and communicate precisely about that hypothetical world
	Finally, the importance of symbolic dialogues in representing, conceptualizing, and communicating about abstract and hypothetical aspects of the world is further demonstrated by Lehrer & Schauble.  They examine the mathematical thinking of first- to fifth- grade students who were guided in discussions about how to symbolically model or “inscribe” growth information.  Rather than just being given an inscription system, they were scaffolded to develop their own. Through these discussions, students learned that an inscription system sometimes represented information which may not readily perceived (e.g., rates of growth and central tendency) and have standard units and measurement procedures to permit communication among students in the same class and between students in different classrooms.  The discussions promoted increasingly sophisticated inscriptions developed by students over time which correspond to the increasingly abstract (i.e., modeling growth rate and systematically comparing growth rates of different systems) and hypothetical (i.e., determining population means and variances) mathematical concepts they formed. The guided dialogues promoted  students’ inventing and refining the inscriptions to address the problem of understanding growth, supporting their representation of , conceptualization of , and communication about more abstract and hypothetical aspects of the world.
	Lehrer & Schauble conclude that the relation between symbolization (inscription) and conceptualization (mathematical concepts) reflects a dynamic “reciprocal bootstrapping” process.  Not only does developing more adequate and complex inscriptions for conventionally representing information promote the acquisition of mathematical concepts for understanding the properties of the information inscribed, but the reverse is also true -- developing mathematical concepts promotes the adequacy and complexity of inscriptions.  This view of distinct but interrelated symbol systems for referring to and communicating information on the one hand, and conceptual understanding of the represented information on the other, accounts for many of the authors’ theoretical proposals regarding the relation between language and thought. Notably, there is no strong support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which supposes that conceptualizations of the world are determined by grammatical and semantic structures of a language such that thought is relative to language variation (Byrnes & Gelman, 1991).   This hypothesis is rejected by Nelson & Shaw and Gentner and Loewenstein who, like Lehrer and  Schauble, argued that linguistic and conceptual structures are distinguished but connected by a dynamic pattern mapping (Nelson & Shaw) or a bidirectional relation (Gentner and Loewenstein). 
	The dynamic reciprocal bootstrapping process proposed to relate symbol systems on the one hand  and conceptual structures and processes on the other is inconsistent not only with Sapir-Whorf, but also with Piagetian and Vygotskian claims.   Piaget recognized the importance of children’s ability to form, think with, and think about (i.e., reflect on) symbols. However, Piagetian theory holds that such abilities are consequences of cognitive development, not an impetus for it (Byrnes & Gelman, 1991).  Piaget’s “cognitive determinism,” which suggests that children’s symbol skills are largely determined by their cognitive development, is rejected by all the authors as too narrow a view of the significance and impact of spontaneously acquiring symbol systems as primary communicative outlets (oral and gestural language) or of formally learning notational systems in school (writing and inscriptions). While cognitive developmental factors were identified as affecting children’s ability to interpret signs symbolically, their symbolic sign interpretation also impacts their cognitive development.
	For Vygotsky and other sociocultural theorists, language and other symbol systems serve as tools to direct and control thought.  While promoting the significance of symbolic communication for cognitive development, this view of cognition is seen as too strongly and broadly controlled by symbol systems.  Gentner and Loewenstein argues for the cognitive impact of specific relational terms, not necessarily of all symbols, and Daiute argues for the role of private subjectivity in cognitive development, instead of supposing that all of cognitive development reflects cultural practices.  Nonetheless, the claim that the actual social practices or language games, in which parents, teachers, peers, etc.,  communicate symbolic meanings that have wider social or cultural significance, provide the platform or entry point for the child’s conceptual socialization.  Such a process is identified specifically by Nelson and Shaw and Budwig, but elements of the claim are found in many chapters.  
	Specifying the relation between language or other symbol systems and thought as dynamic reciprocal bootstrapping allows for the rejection of claims denying the separation between them (Sapir-Whorf) or emphasizing primarily one direction of the relation over the other (Piaget and Vygotsky). It does allow for local and temporary relations to obtain between a symbol system and thought, which may be specific to a particular problem in a given context.  One such relation includes the process of “thinking-for-speaking” (Slobin, 1987) which was referred to by Goldin-Meadow and Gentner and Loewenstein.  Thinking for speaking is the form of on line and on going thought which is designed to fill the requirements of a linguistic code in a communicative context.  It is the thinking one does to express oneself linguistically in a particular communicative context (McNeill & Duncan, 1998).  Both Goldin-Meadow and Gentner and Loewenstein are sympathetic with the proposal but offer extensions.  Gentner and Loewenstein suggests that there are lasting rather than only temporary effects of language on thought, which is consistent with Nelson and Shaw’s view of the effect of language and Olson’s view of the effect of writing on children’s conceptualization of the world.   Goldin-Meadow extends Slobin’s conceptualization of thinking-for-speaking by considering the significance of gestures communicating dimensions of experience that are not readily expressed linguistically, as Spanish speakers gesturally but not linguistically expressing the manner of an object’s motion (e.g., wiggling).  The synchrony of the linguistic and gestural expressions suggests that thinking-for-speaking may be only a part of a broader process of “thinking-for-communicating”. 
	In summary, symbolic communication is claimed to have significance for cognitive development in two ways.  First, there is a progressive expansion of children’s knowledge about aspects of the world which can be conventionally represented and conceptually denoted by symbols.  This expansion builds on itself with different symbol systems (i.e., from oral language to inscriptions) which are acquired in different contexts (i.e., spontaneously at home or taught in school).  Second is the notion of being able to select a symbol out of a system of symbols which can be used to communicate about increasingly precise aspects of the world. Just as symbols coexist with other symbols, forming symbol systems, so symbol systems coexist with each other symbol systems forming a multi-representational network. So increasing the precision of communication refers to the selection of an appropriate symbol from a particular symbol system out of a network of such systems. 
	The role of true symbolic dialogues was seen as important in children accruing these cognitive consequences, particularly for their representation, conceptualization, and communication about more abstract and hypothetical aspects of the world. These dialogues came in many forms (i.e., child to himself or herself, child to parent, child to peer, child to teacher) associated with unique communicative contexts (formal learning, informal learning, writing, playing, expressing desire and agency and others) and involve distinct kinds of symbol systems (oral language, written language, inscriptions).  Despite these cognitive consequences accruing from symbolic communication, the relation between symbolic communication and cognitive conceptualization was seen as bidirectional, not unidirectional. 
Contexts for Partnerships
	Although the cognitive developmental consequences of symbolic communication are specified generally in this chapter, there are important ways in which the consequences are different for children depending on their context. To provide a more fine-grained analysis of these contexts and the cognitive consequences which result, we extend the partnership metaphor which Scholnick presented in her chapter.  Her partnership metaphor was a way to account for the interrelation of the three “representational media” of language, thought, and notation.  The partnership metaphor acknowledges the unique qualities of each type of representational system and how each may be implicated on the same task, refining representations of the others. The metaphor of a partnership emphasizes a dynamic and coordinated process of communicating content between and among the child’s spontaneously acquired, or formally learned representational systems. This sharing allows the child to internally represent external symbols and to externally symbolize internal conceptualizations.  This “reciprocal mediation”  creates new, more powerful ways of representing, conceptualizing, and communicating about the world which may not be created without it.  As Scholnick suggests, each chapter points directly to this process, highlighting different computational or social aspects of it. 
	The partnership metaphor subsumes a number of themes presented in this review.  The claim that symbolic communication has the consequence of increasing the aspects of the world that are conventionally represented and conceptualized certainly involves processes implicated by the partnership metaphor including both representing external symbols and symbolizing internal conceptualizations.  Similarly, the claim that symbolic communication has the consequence of enabling communication about more precise aspects of the world involves selecting from among the already internalized symbols and appropriating the most appropriate for the purpose of communication. Finally, the partnership metaphor captures the claim of a dynamic reciprocal bootstrapping process relating symbol systems on the one hand and conceptual structures and processes on the other, and with it, the “thinking-for-speaking” account (with all of its proposed extensions) of the language/thought debate. 
	We conclude by considering how the metaphor of  partnerships between representational systems might play out differently in different types of communicative contexts.  Communicative contexts are also partnerships but ones between people in true symbolic dialogues.  In this sense we are expanding the partnership metaphor to include individuals in true symbolic dialogues and the representational systems they coordinate between and among themselves in such communicative contexts.  These communicative contexts are distinguishable by such characteristics as the person with whom a child communicates (i.e., parent, teacher, or peer) and the nature of the topic of communication (concrete, abstract, hypothetical).  We consider four such communicative contexts, not in an attempt to be exhaustive, but in the interests in sampling an interesting range of contexts.   The four contexts sampled (parent-concrete, parent-abstract, peer-hypothetical, teacher-abstract), are notable for their very different kinds of purposes and the nature of the cognitive developmental consequences that accrues.  Two communicative contexts (parent-concrete, parent-abstract) are associated with informal learning environments (Schauble & Glaser, 1996), one with a formal learning context (teacher-abstract), and one with a play or discussion context (peer-hypothetical).
	Parent-Concrete
	Contexts in which parent-child communication centers on concrete states of affairs include the standard cases of object labeling.  One notable characteristic of such contexts is that the child likely has perceptual experience of states of affairs being talked about, perhaps even having acquired a preverbal or verbal conceptual understanding of the topic.  As such, the conversation would have the consequence of introducing the child to a conventional symbolic form in its appropriate linguistic frame for the state of affairs.  Of course other adults or children can also introduce the symbol.  However, it is more likely that a parent would have sustained interactions with the child to both introduce the same symbol appropriately and respond to subtly incorrect uses of the symbol by the child.  
	With repeated appropriate presentation, the conventional symbol would serve as a pivot for the child to refine her conceptualization of the states of affairs to align it with the adults’ conceptualization.  This process, captured by Nelson and Shaw’s semiotic super triangle, insures a correspondence between the reference and denotation of the child’s and adult’s symbol.  This is achieved because the symbol provides a conventional means for the parent and child to communication about the state of affairs in different contexts in which the state of affairs is physically present, absent but remembered, or absent but anticipated.  In these contexts quite specific partnerships are forged. The child would internally represent the external symbol and externally symbolize his or her internal conceptualization.  This partnership reflects a bidirectionality between language (external symbols) and thought (internal conceptualization) which would remain stable over time and communicative context
	Parent-child-abstract	
	Sometimes parent-child communication is about more abstract, perhaps relational, entities such as mental state terms. In this context, the child may be more likely to have no experience or conceptual understanding of the relational pattern prior to exposure to the symbol.  The introduction of the symbol, by why of parental conversations, would be the child’s first encounter with the pattern.  In this context, learning the symbol, a relational term, is a struggle as documented by Budwig and Nelson and Shaw.  
	The relational term would serve as a “relational label” which is pivotal in the child’s perception of, reasoning about, storage of, and transfer of the abstract pattern.  Moreover the label may be centrally important to “stabilize” the pattern and sustain focus on the relational patterns rather than the individual properties (c.f., Gentner & Loewenstein and Nelson & Shaw).  Thus, a child’s conceptualization of the pattern denoted by the symbol would have arisen by way of this linguistic mediation; as Gentner and Loewenstein put it, “...the acquisition of relational terms provides both an invitation and a means for the learner to make comparisons and to store the relational meanings that result” (p. xx).  In this sense, parental-abstract communicative contexts involve more of a unidirectional partnership between language and thought, with language mediating thought. 
 	Peer-hypothetical 	
	In a very different communicative context, peers communicate in order to affect thought, not about the real world but about a hypothetical one.  For the present purposes, the hypothetical would includes statements which are false of the real world but true of an alternative unreal world, which is imagined or presumed to exist.  This may include thought about pretend, possible or hypothetical worlds (Amsel & Smalley, 1999; Amsel, Trionfi, & Morris, 2000).  In such contexts, as discussed by Daiute, children’s internally represented hypothetical worlds are interpersonally shared.  In order to share their subjective and unique hypothetical worlds, each participant would have to symbolize their internal representations.  Out of negotiation between participants regarding their own internally represented hypothetical world would emerge a shared conceptualization which participants could then use to refine their internal representations. Thus, there would be a repeated cycle of participants symbolizing their unique and subjective internal representations and augmenting their internal representations in accordance with a shared conceptualization.  This activity may be the basis for the participants writing well-developed stories (Daiute) or engaging socio-dramatic play (Berk, 1994) among other activities.
	 Such a process may well occur with other participants than with peers.  But in few other relationships is there the equality of status that is found between peers.  This equality of status would presumably promote a dynamic negotiation process in which each participant would have contributed to the shared conceptualization.  The partnership formed in this case may be very temporary as the hypothetical world created as a shared conceptualization may not be sustained with other peers or with the same peer at different times. 
	Teacher-abstract
	In formal learning contexts, teachers may well introduce new symbols about which the child has no experience or conceptual understanding. Paralleling the parent-abstract informal learning environments, the teacher’s introduction of new symbols in formal learning environments would be the basis for the child’s conceptualization of the abstract entity or pattern.  Again a more unidirectional partnership obtains between language and thought. The pattern of communication by teachers in formal learning contexts, as alluded to by Lehrer and Schauble, may not be optimally structured to support children’s slow process of interpreting signs that are presented by the teacher as symbolic.  Such failures may be difficult to detect but critically important to correct.  
	Compared to parent-abstract contexts, teacher-abstract ones may result in different patterns of symbol integration and transference.  Conceptualizations learned in school may more readily transfer across classrooms than outside schools, in contrast to the conceptualizations learned at home which may transfer more generally. Moreover, the symbols learned in school might be more readily integrated with other ones learned in school than ones acquired in informal learning contexts (McVaugh, Amsel, Joersz, & Syphus, in preparation), perhaps limited only to those similarly learned in formal contexts.
	What is unique about teacher-abstract communicative contexts is the significance given to children’s facility with notational systems.  Learning to comprehend or express the symbols notationally makes the challenge of learning the appropriate conceptualization of the symbol that much more difficult.  Learning the concept of “verb phrase” while learning to read, or the concept of “paragraphs” while learning to write, or “growth rate” while learning to create histographs requires complex partnerships between thought, language, and notational systems.   The child’s conceptualization created from the symbolic language used by the teacher, becomes symbolized linguistically and notationally, with the consequence of a forging a partnerships between thought and language, thought and notation, and language and notional.  The translation of thought into language and notations provide multiple opportunities for externalizing thought into conventional symbol systems and provide the first chance for the child to select from among symbol systems, the one symbol which is the best for communication in a context.
	In summary, the specific cognitive developmental consequence of symbolic communication depends on the context in which the child’s true symbolic dialogues occur.  That is, unique partnerships between thought, language, and notation were forged in each of the four communicative contexts. Perhaps the most significant conclusion to draw from all this is the one answering the questions posed in the preface about the cognitive consequences of acquiring linguistic vs. notational forms of symbol communication.  It seems that the communicative contexts in which language and notational systems are learned have generally parallel cognitive consequences. In both contexts, others introduce new symbols that must be internalized and conceptualized by the child. The processes for representing symbols internally and symbolizing internal conceptualizations result in new specific but stable language and thought relations being forged. Learning to symbolize thought with both language and notations provides additional learning problems and opportunities for children.  These problems and opportunities arise in managing the symbol systems in order to communicate precisely. With more communicative options available, there are more and increasingly complex partnerships to manage.
	There is both theoretical, methodological, practical significance to considering the parallel cognitive consequences of learning to communicate linguistically in informal environments and notationally in formal ones.  Methodologically, claims of contributions to cognitive development of acquiring language or notational systems can be specifically tested. For example, Olson cited those who claimed a role of notional systems in memory.  But Goldin-Meadow cited research suggesting iconic gestures have the same effect.  Thus any sign, from iconic gestures to symbolic notations, may serve to improve memory. In terms of application, Daiute and Lehrer and Schauble advocate that formal learning environments should exploit the sort of communication processes that occur in informal and play or discussion ones. They propose that such communicative practices as sustained interactions, negotiations, and careful monitoring of appropriate symbol use promotes learning in classrooms. Theoretically, as the relation between cognitive development and symbolic communication is better understood, broad proposals which characterize the relation between language and thought or between notations and thought without regard to the other will be seen as increasingly inadequate. Simple and general unidirectional theories of thought and language or of thought and notional systems can not be made to answer questions raised in the present volume about the complex interactions and interrelations between all forms of symbolic communication and cognitive development.

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