Children's drawings of significant figures for a peer or an adult audience

Abstract

The present study assessed if children would present different information in their drawings of emotion eliciting stimuli when they believed that an adult or a child audience would view their drawings. Seventy-five 6-year-olds (44 boys and 31 girls) were allocated to three groups: the reference group, the child audience group and the adult audience group. All children completed a drawing session where they first drew a neutral uncharacterised figure, followed by drawings of a sad and a happy figure in counterbalanced order. Findings demonstrated that children did consider who would be viewing their drawings when communicating emotional affect and included different features within their drawings. In particular, almost all happy drawings included a smile, but only those drawings where an audience was specified included a wave, and only the adult drawings included flower giving. Within the sad drawings tears and frowns were drawn regardless of audience type, whereas stomping was more likely to be portrayed in drawings with a child audience and thumbs down were more likely to be portrayed in drawings with adult audiences. The findings are discussed in terms of the need to further examine communicative aspects of children's drawings.

The impact of audience age and familiarity on children’s drawings of themselves in contrasting affective states

“…A range of drawing strategies were identified overall which was broadly similar to those revealed in comparable studies (Burkitt & Barrett, 2010;Burkitt et al, 2011;Jolley, 2010). Most interestingly, the majority of strategies identified varied dependent on whether the audience was familiar or unfamiliar.…”

“…Previous research has tended to assume that children's human figure drawings reflect self-depictions (e.g., Hammer, 1997;Leibowitz, 1999;Silver, 1996;Stefanatou & Bowler, 1999) and has used non-specific human figures as the drawing topic (e.g., Burkitt et al, 2003aBurkitt et al, , 2003bBurkitt et al, , 2011Thomas et al, 1989). Asking children to draw unspecific human figures can lack relevance to the child and can lead to difficulties when interpreting whom the children were focusing on during drawing production.…”

The Roles of Emotional Comprehension and Representational Drawing Skill in Children's Expressive Drawing

“…In summary, while some significant links between these individual differences and expressive drawing have been reported, these have not been consistent for all expressive drawing techniques and topics drawn. In the same way, the ability to draw expressively requires knowing the specific emotion that is to be depicted, imagining an appropriate context for that emotion, and depicting it so that an audience can interpret the intended message (Burkitt et al, 2011;Jolley, 2010;Brechet et al, 2009). Despite the current 'lack of clear consensus as regards a working definition of emotional skills' (Wigelsworth, Humphrey, Kalambouka, & Lendrum, 2010, p. 177), it seems that emotional comprehension can be reliably defined as the understanding of the nature, causes and consequences of emotions for ourselves and other people (Harris, 2008;Pons, Daniel, Lafortune, Doudin, & Albanese, 2006;Pons, de Rosnay, & Doudin, 2010).…”

Fun and games - Finnish children’s ideas for the use of digital media in preschool

“…Children may, for example, include the characters of their favorite games and TV shows in the drawings they produce in preschool (Ylönen, 2012). Also, the context in which the drawings are made and the audience to whom they will be shown are meaningful for the children's drawing experience (Burkitt, Watling & Murray, 2011;Einarsdottir et al, 2009). Drawings produced at an institutional education thus differ from the ones produced at home and drawings with instructions differ from children's spontaneous drawings.…”

“…Children's drawings don't take place in a cultural "vacuum" and the context in which the drawings are made and the instructions children are given have an impact on what they will draw (see Burkitt et al, 2011;Einarsdottir et al, 2009). Thus, not surprisingly, the most often drawn and mentioned devices were the ones used as prompts in the directive: computer (found in 73 drawings), tablet (50), camera (48) and smartphone (17) (see Table 2).…”