1-031 - Children’s Drawings as Representations of Their Spatial Cognition

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Developmental psychologists and lay people alike continue to be fascinated by the content and symbolism in children’s drawings. Rich literatures have evaluated children’s drawings for diverse insights: from children’s emotional development (e.g., Coles & Sartor, 1992) to their aesthetic development (e.g., Kellogg, 1970). This symposium investigates how children’s drawings reflect their representations of the spatial world. Paper 1 suggests that children’s tendency to populate their drawings with numerous and rich representations of objects versus layouts reflects their greater facility in drawing the geometry of objects versus scenes. Paper 2 suggests that children and adults systematically use both shape and color in their drawings of familiar objects—even when color is not a defining characteristic, and that reliance on color leads to better recognition of the drawn objects by naïve participants. By comparing children’s drawing from semantic memory versus from a given visual exemplar, Paper 3 suggests that changes in children’s visual memory through development does not fully explain changes in the shape features that children include in their drawings of objects. Paper 4 suggests that cultural differences in children’s drawings, such as the arrangement of objects and the height of the horizon line, are related to more basic spatial tendencies that differ across cultures. Together, this symposium illustrates how children’s drawing production provides a medium to connect spatial perception and cognition, and thus suggests further ways to both explore and understand one of our species’ most powerful creative domains.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Moira Rose Dillon, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Young Children’s Differential Treatment of Objects and Extended Layouts in Drawing Production - Presenting Author: Moira Rose Dillon, New York University

• What Drawings can tell us About Children and Adults’ Object Recognition - Presenting Author: Lynn K Perry, University of Miami

• The Role of Memory in Children’s Drawings - Presenting Author: Bria Long, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Judy Fan, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Yi Feng, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Zixian Chai, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Michael C. Frank, Stanford University

• Cultural Factors on Drawing Development: Cross-Cultural Studies Comparing American, Canadian, and Japanese Children’s Drawing - Presenting Author: Sawa Senzaki, University of Wisconsin -Green Bay; Non-Presenting Author: Takahiko Masuda, University of Alberta