‘A smile stands for health and a bed for illness’: Graphic cues in children’s drawings

Abstract

Objective: The study aimed to investigate whether children use specific types of graphic cues (facial, postural, contextual) in their drawings of healthy and ill persons and whether these cues differ as a function of age. Design: Cross-sectional design. Setting: A public primary school in a medium-sized city in Greece. Method: A total of 200 children in the age group of 5, 7, 9 and 11 years were first asked to define the terms under investigation, and then to draw a healthy and an ill person, as well as a baseline drawing (of a person neither healthy nor ill). Human figure drawings of health and illness were compared with their baseline drawing in an attempt to detect possible alterations in the (1) face, (2) body and (3) overall context of the drawing. Results: From the age of 5 years onwards, children were able to use a combination of graphic cues to convey health and illness in their drawings. Moreover, children in all age groups more often (1) employed facial cues to depict illness and health, (2) used more postural and contextual cues to depict illness than health, (3) introduced a variety of contextual cues in their drawings (e.g. linguistic, nutritional, environmental, physical and medical) and (4) used more types of graphic cues as well as more categories of contextual cues to depict illness than health. Finally, it was found that the drawings of the 5-year-old children involved significantly fewer graphic cues than those of the 7- and 11-year-olds, and significantly less contextual cues than the drawings produced by the 9- and 11-year-olds. Conclusion: Study findings shed light on the way children perceive and represent graphically illness and health and these are discussed in relation to their implications for health education.

Children’s conceptions of coronavirus

“…Our results revealed that children conceive coronavirus as embedded in a multidimensional COVID-19 construct, which can be designated not only through characteristics of the Sars-CoV-2 per se but also through its medical, social, and emotional consequences on people’s lives. This holistic understanding of coronavirus seems to be in accordance with studies suggesting a similar trend in children’s conceptions of illness (Bonoti et al, 2019; Zaloudikova, 2010).…”

“…For the aforementioned reasons, drawings have proved an effective means for exploring children’s conceptions of illness (Mouratidi et al, 2016; Piko and Bak, 2006; Zaloudikova, 2010). Drawing-based studies have confirmed that children identify illness primarily as a biomedical situation (Myant and Williams, 2005; Schmidt and Frohling, 2000), but have also revealed an appreciation of its consequences on one’s social and emotional adjustment (Bonoti et al, 2019; Zaloudikova, 2010).…”

Young children’s ability to make predictions about novel illnesses

“…Preschool-aged children are willing to touch and ingest things that adults and older children would avoid-dirty objects, food that appears to be sneezed on, or food that contains a contaminant (e.g., DeJesus et al, 2015;Fallon et al, 1984;Stevenson et al, 2010) and they have difficulty making consistent predictions about who might get sick and what people could do to avoid contaminants (Legare et al, 2009). It is not until the early elementary school years that children avoid interacting with a person who showed symptoms of illness (Blacker & LoBue, 2016), and children's drawings of sick people increase in complexity (i.e., the types of graphic and contextual cues employed) across this same period (Bonoti et al, 2019).…”

¿Ha cambiado la pandemia del COVID-19 la percepción de las niñas y niños de Educación Primaria sobre la “salud” y “enfermedad”?

“…Los dibujos son un método de investigación libre de lenguaje muy útil para explorar de manera amigable y no amenazante los conocimientos, percepciones y experiencias sobre la salud y la enfermedad (Morrow, 2001;Mouratidi et al, 2016;Bonoti et al, 2019). En nuestro estudio, al pedir a las niñas y niños que dibujasen una persona sana/enferma, estaríamos viendo su percepción acerca de la salud/enfermedad más que su experiencia en torno a ellas (Lima y De Lemos, 2014;Renslow y Maupin, 2017).…”

“…La mayoría del alumnado utilizó tres tipos de señales gráficas para representar la salud y la enfermedad en sus dibujos: faciales (cara alegre vs. cara triste), corporales/posturales (cuerpo en movimiento o inmóvil) y contextuales (exterior vs. interior; jugando; comiendo) (Tabla 4), como también detectó Bonoti et al (2019). El análisis preliminar no reveló ninguna diferencia de género.…”