Flexibility in young children's human figure drawings
Flexibility in young children's human figure drawings
Young children are often regarded as inflexible and stereotypic in their drawings. A series of five experiments investigated young children, in three age groups (3;6-4;5; 4;6-5;5; 5;6-6;5) on various tasks of human figure drawings, to establish if and how they alter their initial drawings according to instructional constraints. Experimental conditions were manipulated between baseline drawings, a contrast situation, a communication game strategy and a paired communication and non-communication experiment. It was found that young children do differentiate between task figures with the aid of various qualitative and quantitative codes. The differential use of discriminatory first and second order codes was found to be age related and adaptable to context. The effect of experimental conditions (especially the communication game) was to enhance use of codes that would otherwise appear spontaneously at an older age only. Most remarkably affected by experimental conditions were the 4;6-5;5 year olds. Rate of change in sequential order was found to be quite flexible and age related. Furthermore, placement on the paper was used as a discriminating code between task figures. The results suggest that young children are using a preferential hierarchy to encode task figures and that they flexibily change their drawings to meet different informational requirements. (DX84034)
University of Southampton
1988
Sitton, Ruth
(1988)
Flexibility in young children's human figure drawings.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
Young children are often regarded as inflexible and stereotypic in their drawings. A series of five experiments investigated young children, in three age groups (3;6-4;5; 4;6-5;5; 5;6-6;5) on various tasks of human figure drawings, to establish if and how they alter their initial drawings according to instructional constraints. Experimental conditions were manipulated between baseline drawings, a contrast situation, a communication game strategy and a paired communication and non-communication experiment. It was found that young children do differentiate between task figures with the aid of various qualitative and quantitative codes. The differential use of discriminatory first and second order codes was found to be age related and adaptable to context. The effect of experimental conditions (especially the communication game) was to enhance use of codes that would otherwise appear spontaneously at an older age only. Most remarkably affected by experimental conditions were the 4;6-5;5 year olds. Rate of change in sequential order was found to be quite flexible and age related. Furthermore, placement on the paper was used as a discriminating code between task figures. The results suggest that young children are using a preferential hierarchy to encode task figures and that they flexibily change their drawings to meet different informational requirements. (DX84034)
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Published date: 1988
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Local EPrints ID: 460753
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/460753
PURE UUID: 1cdc9a10-899f-4cea-932c-cfa63684c7e9
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 18:29
Last modified: 04 Jul 2022 18:29
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Author:
Ruth Sitton
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