Expressivity in children's drawings of themselves for adult audiences with varied authority and familiarity

Abstract

This study investigated whether children's expressive drawings of themselves vary as a function of audience authority and familiarity. One hundred and seventy‐five children, 85 boys and 90 girls, aged between 8 years 1 months and 9 years 2 months (M = 8 years 5 months) were allocated into seven groups: a reference group (n = 25), where no audience was specified, and six audience groups (n = 25 per group) varying by audience type (policeman vs. teacher vs. man) and familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar). They drew baseline then happy and sad drawings of themselves, rated affect towards drawings type, and rated perceived audience authority. Audience familiarity and authority impacted expressive drawing strategy use and this varied by gender. There was higher overall expressive strategy use for happy drawings and for girls, and influences of affect type, familiarity, and authority were found. The implications of children's perceptions of audience type on their expressive drawings are discussed. What is already known on this subject? Children vary their happy and sad expressive drawings for familiar peer and adult audiences. They show more positive expressivity to familiar peer and adult audiences. Children perceive authority differently depending on professional roles. What does this study add? Children's expressive drawings differ depending on audience familiarity and professional role. Greater expressivity for familiar than unfamiliar audiences, with difference varying by perceived authority. For policemen, boys showed more sad expression when unfamiliar and girls showed more happy expression when familiar.

Depicting emotions for a male or for a female audience: Do children adapt the content of their drawings to the audience gender?

“…The drawings were then rated through a content analysis, which revealed the use of seven expressive graphic cues for each emotion. First, in line with previous research, we expect children to use a higher number of graphic cues and/or different types of graphic cues when drawing for a specified audience (male and female audience conditions) than when drawing with no audience specified (control condition) (Burkitt, 2017; Burkitt et al, 2011, 2019; Burkitt & Watling, 2013). Second, because children apply their developing representations of gender to interpret the world around them, we expect children to alter the content of their drawings depending on whether they draw for a male or a female audience (Leaper & Freidman, 2007).…”

“…For instance, when asked to draw an array of bricks, children do not draw the same way when they are explicitly told that someone would use their drawing to understand the exact positions of the bricks (audience condition) compared to when they are not (control condition). There is also strong evidence that children alter expressive aspects of their drawings depending on audience-related information (Burkitt, 2017; Burkitt & Watling, 2013; Burkitt et al, 2011, 2019). In their studies, Burkitt and colleagues found that, from the age of 6, the way children depict emotions (i.e., happiness and sadness) in their drawings varies as a function of both the existence and the type of audience.…”

“…First, from the age of 7, children are able to draw and to manipulate the graphic cues required to depict sadness, anger, and fear (Brechet et al, 2009). Second, children in this age range have been shown to alter the content of their drawings depending on various audience characteristics (age, familiarity, authority) (Burkitt & Watling, 2013; Burkitt et al, 2011, 2019). Third, there is a well-documented shift between 7 and 9 relative to the way children consider gender-related information, from rigidity to flexibility (Martin, 1989; Ruble et al, 2006; Trautner et al, 2005).…”

“…Using established procedures (Burkitt, 2017; Burkitt & Watling, 2013; Burkitt et al, 2011, 2019), 7- and 9-year-olds were asked to draw a figure and then to produce three expressive drawings of a person (sad, angry, and frightened). Each child was assigned to one of the three conditions: control (with no audience specified), male audience, and female audience (where children were informed that a man/a woman would see their drawing and would need to recognize the depicted emotion).…”

Typical emotional expression in children’s drawings of the human face

“…In relatively recent years a number of studies have examined the development of children's ability to represent expressive faces, either explicitly requiring an emotional connotation or proposing an evocative theme (see Burkitt et al, 2019, Laghi et al, 2014Pezzica et al, 2016;, as recent examples including references to other relevant papers). According to these studies some properties of drawings, such as figure size, shape, or color, do possess an emotional meaning that can be investigated systematically.…”