What do children’s drawings tell us about child development?

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What do childrens drawings tell us
about child development?
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Why study childrens drawings?

• - Learn about acquisition of drawing skills
• such as motor execution, planning strategies,
  spatio-geometric and part-whole relations, and
  artistic talent.
• -To use it as a source of evidence with respect
  to more general processes such as
  representational change.

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How study childrens drawings?Two approaches
(Vinter, 1999)

• Product oriented approach- The what of drawing
  or the trace left on the paper.
• Process oriented approach The how of drawing
  or the organisation of movement used for drawing.

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Drawing develops through distinct stages
(Luquet, 19131927 Piaget Inhelder
19561971)

• 1.) Scribbling (ages 2-4)- fortuitous realism
• 2.) Preschematic stage (ages 4-7)
• Failed realism
• elements are unrelated/unconnected
• Intellectual realism
• Children draw what they know
• 3.) Schematic stage (ages 8-9)
• Visual realism
• children draw what they see

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What influences childrens drawing?(Luquet)

• Childs internal model/representation (mental
  image)
• - Contains the critical features of that topic
  (sides of cube).
• - Attempt to include all critical features may
  result in unrealistic drawing.
• (sides of cube drawn folded out
• or cup with handle)

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Visual Intellectual realism (Freeman
Janikoun, 1972)

• Intellectual realism- draw what you know rather
  than what you see
• Visual realism-draw what you see in a very
  realistic way

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Visual Intellectual realism Cox (1978,1981)

• Occlusion task- Children younger than 8 yrs.
  Failed to draw the appropriate relationship.

incorrect
correct
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Luquet / Piaget Inhelder (1956,1969)

• Luquets theory of drawings as representations of
  internal models has been taken up as a cognitive
  theory (Piaget incorporated ideas into his own
  account of child dev.) , even though
• Luquet does acknowledge other influencing factors
  which include non-cognitive factors. Thus, it is
  doubtful that Luquet was a strong advocate of
  stages.

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Criticisms of stage account(see intro in Charman
Baron-Cohen,1993)

• Stages too rigid (Freeman, 1980)
• 6yr olds more successful in drawing occluded
  objects when meaningful context added (Cox,1981)
• When balls given faces children aged 7 were able
  to give a partial occlusion response. (Littleton
  Cox, 1989)

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Are there developmental stages?(see intro in
Charman Baron-Cohen,1993)

• The idea of rigid stages has been left behind,
  however children still show evidence of
  sequential cummulative progression in drawing
  development.
• Despite an abundance of literature challenging
  stages account of drawing, children below age 5
  rarely produce visually real drawings
• (Shift from intellectual to realistic drawing
  still occurs in young children)

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Autistic Savants
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Do individuals with autism progress through
drawing stages more rapidly? (Eames Cox,1994
Charman Baron-Cohen, 1993)

• Those in the general autistic population?
• Found No evidence that those with autism
  progress more rapidly to visual realism.
• Conclude Those with autism produce
  intellectually realistic drawings, like those
  with typical development. This means they have
  the capacity to represent non-mental
  representations (using their internal model).

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But how can we explain autistic savants?

• Perhaps those with savant abilities form
  representational schemas as those with typical
  development, but features emphasized are
  primarily structural descriptions rather than
  semantic knowledge.

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Pring Hermelin, 1993

• Aimed to investigate the mental processes
  contributing to graphic aptitude of savant
  artists.
• Does reproduction memory and picture sorting rely
  on structural or semantic features in savant and
  non-savant artists?

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Exp. 1- Reproduction memory
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Exp. 2 Picture sorting
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Conclusions

• There is no evidence to suggest that autistic
  savants have a particularly well developed memory
  for the visual-structural features of objects, or
  have overall more efficient visual memory.

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Snyder Thomas (1997)

• Argue autistic artists make no assumptions about
  what is seen in their environment.
• They do not have mental representations about
  what is salient in their environment and see all
  details as equally important.
• Perhaps perception is less Top-down

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Why study childrens drawings?

• 1.) Explore acquisition of drawing skills
• such as motor execution, planning strategies,
  spatio-geometric and part-whole relations, and
  artistic talent).

• 2.) To use it as a source of evidence with
  respect to more general processes such as
  representational change.

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Representational change

• Knowledge is internalised and stored in the form
  of symbolic representations in a persons mind.
• These internal representations may be modified to
  integrate new information.

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Traditional theories of child development?
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Karmiloff-Smith (19901992)

• First attempt to combine the Nativist and
  Piagetian views of cognitive development.
• Infants are born with specified pre-dispositions
  or biases that focus attention to relevant
  environmental inputs.
• Initial representations become redescribed/reforma
  tted with experience.

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Constraints theory of child development

• An internal representation is first specified as
  a sequentially fixed list. (constraints exists at
  this level).
• Through representational redescription sequential
  constraints are relaxed.
• End result is an internal representation which is
  specified as a structured yet easily manipulable
  set of features.

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Karmiloff-Smith (1990)

• Children were asked to draw a man with 2 heads
• They found 5 year olds were significantly less
  successful than 8 years olds.

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Successful Not successful

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Alternative explanations

• Zhi, Thomas, and Robinson (1997) argue that
  Karmiloff-Smiths findings may be result of
• 1.) Small sample size
• 2.) Motivational/Dispositional factors
• 3.) Attentional factors

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Experiment 1

• Aim to replicate with larger sample
• 32 (4-5 year olds) 26 (8-10 year olds)
• Half of children were shown a picture of a woman
  with 2 heads before drawing.

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Exp. 1- examples of drawings
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Experiment 2

• Aim to explore dispositional factors
• 26 (4-5 year olds)

Unfamiliar object
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Exp. 2 - examples of drawings
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Experiment 3

• Aimed to explore whether inflexibility in drawing
  could be found in younger children.
• 32 (3-4 year olds)

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Exp. 3 - examples of drawings
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Experiment 4

• Aimed to explore external task related factors,
  such as attention.
• 81 (3-5 year olds)

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Summary of supporting evidence

• A substantial number of 4-5 year olds failed even
  with the clarification of seeing the illustration
  first and a larger sample size.
• Study 2 ruled out dispositional factors
• Study 4 ruled out attentional factors

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Challenges to theory

• Many 3-4 year olds could successfully adapt their
  usual drawing procedure to produce a man with 2
  heads.
• External factors such as trying to maintain a
  coherent and symmetrical composition may be able
  to account for difficulties with drawing a two
  headed figure.

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