Beagles-Roos, J. & Greenfield, P. M. (1979). Development of structure and strategy in two-dimensional pictures. Developmental Psychology, 15(5), 483-494.

The development of two structural principles, hierarchical complexity and interruption, was examined in a new domain, two-dimensional pictures. Using felt pieces, 4- to 5 1/2-year-olds were asked to reproduce felt pictures of flower arrangements constituting tree structures of different levels of hierarchical complexity. For each model, task difficulty was varied by requiring children to construct pictures either with whole flowers or with component pieces. The ability to reproduce the models formed a Guttman scale according to tree structure complexity, and older children scored higher on the scale than younger children. Thus, hierarchical complexity has a developmental role in the pictorial domain, as in language and three-dimensional construction. The construction process was analyzed in terms of uninterrupted and interrupted strategies. Unlike earlier results with abstract (nonfigural) thee-dimensional construction tasks, children did not avoid interrupted strategies. The lack of strategy preference with whole flowers and the development of a preference for interrupted strategies with components may stem from the fact that the strong figural and thematic aspects of the models reduced the cognitive complexity of an interrupted strategy.