To investigate whether children's understanding of the concept of death varies as a function of death experience and age, 52 children aged 7, 9, and 11 years (26 had a personal death experience), drew a picture reflecting the meaning of the word death and completed the Death Concept Questionnaire for examination of Human and Animal Death. The results showed that the 2 methodological tools used offered complementary information and that children's understanding of death is related both to age and past experience. Children with death experience seem to have a more realistic understanding of death than their inexperienced age-mates. As regards to the effect of age, our findings support the assumption that the different components of death develop through different processes.

Traditionally, studies assessing children’s experiences of bullying and victimization have focused on the use of questionnaires and peer-nominations. The present study aimed to investigate this phenomenon by using two complementary assessment tools, namely self-reported questionnaires and children’s drawings. The sample consisted of 448 boys and girls drawn from the 4th to 6th grade classrooms of ten primary schools in Central Greece. Children were asked to: (a) draw a scene of peer victimization taking place in their school and (b) complete self-reported questionnaires regarding bullying behaviour, victimization and participant roles in bully/victim incidences. Although the results showed that the relation between drawing and self-report measures is not a straightforward one, they do reveal some interesting associations primarily related to gender differences. In other words, it was found that boys outnumbered girls in both bullying behaviour and victimization. Regarding the employed forms of victimization, boys tended to depict themselves in more physical aggression scenes than girls, while girls tended to draw themselves in more verbal victimization scenes than boys.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore possible age differences in children’s perceptions of illness and health and to what extent these differ from adults’ perceptions. Design: Cross-sectional design. Setting: Selected nursery and primary schools in Greece. Method: The sample consisted of 347 children aged 5–11 years and 114 adults – as a comparison group. Each participant was asked to create two drawings, depicting illness and health respectively, and to give an explanatory title for each. Drawings were categorised into three main categories, depending on the aspect of illness or health depicted, namely biomedical, psychosocial and lifestyle. Results: Older children produced more multifaceted depictions of illness and health than their younger counterparts, while the youngest group had difficulty to represent the two concepts clearly. A comparison of children’s perception of illness and health revealed that the first is perceived mainly as a biomedical phenomenon, while the latter as a psychosocial one. Finally, a comparison of adults’ and children’s representations showed that children understand illness mainly through its biomedical dimensions, unlike adults who seem to prefer to stress psychosocial ones. Conclusions: Knowledge of children’s subjective perceptions of illness and health may be useful in designing health prevention programmes and for medical professionals working with children experiencing chronic illness.

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The present study aimed to examine children’s conceptions of coronavirus as denoted in their verbal descriptions and drawings and whether these vary as a function of children’s age and the mode of expression. Data were collected in Greece during spring 2020 and 344 children aged 4 to 10 years were first asked to verbally describe coronavirus and then to produce a drawing of it. Content analysis of data revealed the following main themes: (a) Coronavirus, (b) Medical, (c) Psychological, and (d) Social. Results showed that children from an early age present a remarkable level of understanding of coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease as a multidimensional construct, which can be designated not only through characteristics of the Sars-Cov-2 but also through its medical, social, and psychological consequences on people’s lives. Moreover, children were found to emphasize different aspects of this construct depending on their age and the mode of expression.

The aim of our study was to investigate possible relationships between writing and drawing performance of school-aged children, in order to compare the two skills at the within-individual level. The sample consisted of 182 right- and left-handed children, aged 8 to 12 years. Children were examined by the Greek adaptation of the Luria-Nebraska neuropsychological battery in spontaneous writing, copying and writing to dictation and they were asked to complete four different drawing tasks. The results produced significant correlations between drawing scores and scores in all three writing tasks. Significant differences in drawing performance among proficient and poor hand writers were also found. On the other hand, there were no significant differences between right- and left-handers’ performance on the above tasks, despite the overrepresentation of left-handed amongst between poor writers. Our findings create a fruitful ground for the further study of early drawing as a means to predict later handwriting problems.

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