Childrens Drawings

What do nestlingrens drawing offs tell us about squirtrens minds? The topic of tikerens drawings and their telling to a childs cognitive processes, lineamenticularly thoughts is a topic of great interest. It is widely conceptualised that children lots express timbreings, thoughts and mess get alongs which they push asidenot express through with(predicate) words through drawing pictures. This examine reviews previous research conducted on childrens drawings and aims to assess what exactly it tells us about their minds and what messages they be throwting d birth in drawings.Following an all overview of drawing and the cognitive development, this essay evaluates a selection of relevant research studies into childrens drawings and minds and aims to insure some ad hoc symbols which are often drawn by young children and the meaning of these graphic images. According to Thomas & Silk (1990), childrens drawings exhaust a variety of different purposes varying from bringing p leasure and enjoyment to themselves, decorating walls and expressing feelings and presentationing others how they feel about certain disapproves or people. N. R.Smith (1973) believes that the child begins the drawing with no intention or symbolisation, but as the drawing progresses a pattern is made and the child throws a formation and then proceeds to comprise for the rest of the drawing shift towards this representation and builds on that. The basic pattern of childrens development of drawings begins at scribbles which appear from 12 months. The scribbles are non-representational and incisively involve the progressive control of movement. These scribbles bunk to be viewed as gestures rather than drawing in true sense of the beingness according to Vygotsky.Arnheim (1956) believes that the earliest scribbles are a motor impulse, this alone means the child has no intention to draw a representation of an object or event it is just a coincidence. They begin to progress from 2 0 months of age where the scribbles being to bugger off representational and the marks stand for whole objects. Cognitive psychologists tend to search these scribbles for visual resemblance where they attack to make some sense of it. There is often some intended meaning within the scribbles, for caseful dots representing foot prints but not true representation.Symbolic pictures start to appear around 3 historic period of age where children begin to understand that pictures represent objects and begin to start drawing honest pictures of people. Over time more(prenominal) living pictures are drawn around 5/6 socio-economic classs old and at 6/7 years old children begin to custom size, position and composition to show depth, those of which allow more natural representations of the real world and tend to bring forth a more significant meaning. Luquet (1927) and later on Piaget & Inhelder (1969) invented the Stage Theory of Drawing.This is the belief that drawings are externa l representations of the childs internal model which is their kind picture. The phase angle theory consists of four stages. The first stage is fortuitous realism which occurs at 1. 5-2. 5 years old and consists of labelling objects in scribbles. The second stage is failed realism (2/5-5 years old), representational intention but tends to be inaccurate. The third stage being intellectual realism (5-8 years old), drawing what the child knows rather than what they see and the fourth stage, visual realism which is beyond 8 years old which is where the child actually draws what they see.There has been say to punt up the stage theory, for example Freeman & Janikoun (1972) conducted a playing area in 1972 on 5-7 year olds. They were asked to draw a mug in front of them which had the handle out of view. Results ready that under 8 year olds who would be in the intellectual stage drew the mug which included the hidden move as they would be drawing what they knew, whereas the 8 year old s and over who would be in the Visual stage drew only what they could see.However the stage theory has been criticised for the stages being too rigid leading to underestimating the childs ability. Barret, Beaumont & Jennett (1985) withal pitch that instructions can charter an impact on the childs drawing. They found that if children were given standard instructions, i. e. just telling them to draw what they can see, only 11% of drawings would be emend whereas if they were given explicit instructions, i. e. draw exactly what they can see and look at it very carefully in order to draw it as you see, 65% of drawings were correct.It is also argue that the stage theory can vary over different cultures. The human figure is a drawing positionly investigated as it is regarded to be a way in which children express something about themselves. Researchers believe they can rationalise a childs personality and their current emotional state. Tests were created to investigate this, for exam ple the Kinetic Family Drawings Test claimed to measure how children matte about the topics in the drawing and their wider environment.However further research was conducted to assess the reliability and validity of this test and results be to be quite poor meaning the test was not a reliable indicator of childrens emotions and drawings. However it is the more recent research which is providing evidence that childrens drawings do show childrens feelings as they tend to focus more on particular drawing styles, drawing size and colour which show that the drawings can be investigated systematically (Burkitt, 2004).This can cause some confusion though because it is difficult to understand what aspect of emotion a child is conveying through a large or d cause in the mouth figure, however as this topic is increasingly looked it, it is coming to the conclusion that if the child is feeling happy and feels domineering towards the figure they are drawing then the figure size tends to be l arger whereas a small figure will be use if the child is feeling negative. This is useful in understanding how children are feeling simply by analysing their drawings.Childrens drawings are often described as a reflect of a childs representational development, meaning that as children grow older they develop more complex and representational strategies of drawing. These are also furthermore differentiated by gender. A study conducted by Cherney et al. (2006) collected drawings from 109 5-13 year olds of the childs family and school. The results showed significant age and gender differences revolving around the amount of full point included in the drawings of the school showing that females included more.The drawings also showed stereotypical drawings between males and females pictures showing that genders represent families differently. The drawings of the families give noticeed that the females drawings may represent their experiences with family relationships and they tend to value these relationships more than males. These results also showed that with age, the drawings became more realistic which supports the findings of several previous studies on drawing development with age leading to more representational drawings.Girls also drew the female figures taller than the boys which may be reflective of how she feels about the relationships in her life and that she values her fellow traveler female friends more dearly. The taller figures can also indicate high self-esteem. It is educeed that differences in motor skills may flip the findings. The act upon used in childrens drawings can also help play a part in discovering the childs mind. For example Dr Winter (2006) states that when a child draws in sad colours such as black and grey, it does not immediately mean that there is something wrong with the child, however if the child is onstantly using black, grey and other dark colours in favour of other brighter, cheerful colours, it could suggest the ch ild has some sort of problem which is worth investigating. A study by E. Burkitt & A. Davis (2003) was conducted to investigate the use of childrens colour choice in drawings and how these colours related to what they thought of the drawings. It consisted of 330 4-11 year olds. It was found that children used the colours which they preferred more to colour in the objects they thought to be nice and used their least(prenominal) best-loved colours for the objects they thought to be nasty.It was also found that the colour black was the most often used colour used for the negative images. These findings help interpret childrens drawings just by expression at what colours are used and this will help give an understanding of the childs thoughts on the object. So in general childrens drawings which use bright and bold colours tend to be viewed as positive and assume the child is experience happy cognitions whereas when a child uses dark colours it is assumed that the child may be exper iencing distress and negative cognitions.However Burkitt (2003) criticised this and argued that when a child uses a dark colour it may not necessarily mean they are expressing a negative attitude, it could simply be that the child favours this colour and they want to express this in their drawing by using their favourite colour. The things that children may not be able to tell themselves can often be found through interpretations and observations of their drawings of graphic symbols.Previous research found the main and clearest signs found in drawings are over sized ears without earrings which could suggest the child is experiencing some sort of verbal abuse in their life, big hands in a drawing suggest that the child is experiencing some sort of physical abuse and aggression, if a drawing of a person has no mouth it is suggested that the child finds it difficult to communicate and drawings of a person with jagged teeth, spike fingers and hair relate to aggressive behaviour.However to properly interpret childrens drawings, these patterns must be consistent over time and not just occur once otherwise it is highly likely it will wee-wee no meaning or representation and is just a random occurrence with significance at all. Wales believes that as we begin to summarize characteristics of childrens drawings and watch them develop and change end-to-end childhood we curtly see that the observations that are made on the hildrens drawings are in fact the product of our own interpretations and what we believe the picture is showing. The straits of how children draw pictures which differ so much from adults is a major question which often causes debates such as is there actually a message there or is it just a typical childs drawing which has no significance or meaning whatsoever.Many questions arise involving this research area once people attempt to make sense of childrens drawings, however many an(prenominal) people believe childrens drawings should be left as th ey are without investigation as they believe it is mysterious and imaginative. The research looked into for this essay has shown that the main indicators used in childrens drawings which help to understand childrens thoughts, messages and emotions are the colours used and the figure size.The research into childrens drawings in relation to childrens minds has found many results showing that drawings do relate to the childs cognitions however all research into interpretation childrens drawings and what it tells us about their minds can be criticised because it could just be that the child enjoys drawing something particular and their decision to draw what they are drawing is always influenced by their own knowledge of the object and their own thoughts and interpretations on the object and what bits are important about it.The drawing is a representation of how the child sees the world themselves and it is thought that to alter this information by adding adult interpretations and to in vestigate more into it is a shame. As the childs cognition capacity increasing, children are more able to express representations as they move from simple drawings, to complex drawings. It is difficult to conclude whether these drawings actually represent something to the child or whether it is simply our own interpretations and representations. References Barret, Beaumont & Jennett. (1985).The rear of instructions on view-specificity in young childrens drawing and picture selection. The British Psychological Society, 8 (4), 393-400. Burkitt, E. & Davis, A. (2003). Childrens colour choices for completing drawings of affectively characterised topics. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 44, 445-455. Burkitt, E. (2004). Drawing conclusions from childrens art. The Psychologist, 17, 566-568. Cherney et al. (2006). Childrens drawings A mirror to their minds. Educational Psychology, 26 (1), 127-142. Chia, N. (2006, October 26). Understand your children throu gh their drawings.LESNET Web Blog. Retrieved December 12, 2012, from http//www. lsesnet. com/ web log/? p=28 Freeman, N, H. & Janikoun, R. (1972). Intellectual realism in childrens drawings of a familiar object with characteristic features. Child Development, 43 (3), 1116-1121. Grieve, R. & Hughes, M. (1991). Understanding children. 140-144. Luquet. (1927). Stage Theory of Drawing Meadows, S. (1993). Childrens drawings. The child as a thinker. The development and acquisition of cognition in childhood. 94-96. Thomas, G. & Silk,A. (1990). An introduction to the psychology of childrens drawings. Hemel Hempstead Harvester Wheatsheaf. Self-Reflective Assessment 1/ How did you search for and identify suitable cultivation for this assignment? Has your reading been sufficiently wide enough and does it make good use of peer-reviewed sources? I used Google scholar, e-library, books from the library and the references provided in the lecture PowerPoint slides to find suitable reading on chil drens drawings and childrens minds and it was sufficiently wide enough. All readings were suitable and related to the essay question. 2/ How does your Introduction orientate the reader? How well do you identify the purpose and scope of the essay, and outline your thesis?My introduction orientates the reader because I tell what the essay was about in general and I stated how it has been addressed by previous researchers. I identified the purpose of the essay well as I addressed the main issue of how it is believed that childrens drawings can explain a childs cognitions. My thesis was outlined well as I summarised the structure of the essay and what it will include. 3/ What evidence have you used to support your argument and the points or claims you make? Are your sources reliable, and have you cited these at appropriate points throughout the essay using APA style?I used APA style to cite my sources throughout my essay. I have used evidence from previous studies conducted, journals and books to support my arguments and points made. These are all very reliable sources and have been put in my reference section also. 4/ How well have you critically evaluated your material? I try to criticise and argue to an extent against as many points and argument as I possibly could in my essay so that more viewpoints come across giving me more to evaluate. 5/ How well have you answered the question and avoided unnecessary digression or irrelevant content?I believe that all of my content are relevant to the question in one way or another. Every point relates back to what the childrens drawing can tell us about their mind and tried also to explain why when possible. 6/ How well does your conclusion summarise the overall argument and round off the essay? The conclusion summarises the overall argument well as it includes all the main, important parts from each study rounded up into one to make an overall conclusion. The essay is rounded off with a nett and straight, simple an swer to the essay question. .