Title

The effects of object alignment on the representation of depth in young children's drawings

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Publication Date

1-1-1992

Abstract

Light and Humphreys (1981, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 31, 521-530) provided evidence that young children's drawings, despite infrequently showing view-specific occlusion, do systematically reflect spatial relations within an array. The present research tested the hypothesis that young children's preferences for canonical "best views" interact with array-faithful tendencies to increase early uses of occlusion. Forty-three children between 4 and 7 years of age drew arrays like Light and Humphrey's end-to-end alignments, with end-on views of objects in depth, and arrays aligned side-to-side, with canonical side-views of objects in depth. Significantly fewer single-object, view-specific occlusions were produced for end-to-end than for side-to-side alignments. Nevertheless, the former reveal that more children are able to use the vertical dimension to depict multiple objects in depth. Other comparisons suggest an interaction in multiple-object depictions of canonicality with spatial dimension and graphic complexity. © 1992.

Volume

54

Issue

1

First Page

19

Last Page

36

DOI

10.1016/0022-0965(92)90015-X

ISSN

00220965

PubMed ID

1506821

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