Children's human figure drawings in the UK and Japan: The effects of age, sex and culture

Abstract

The participants were 120 UK and 120 Japanese children. There were two age groups (7‐year‐olds and 11‐year‐olds) with equal numbers of boys and girls in each. Each child drew three figures: a man standing and facing the viewer, a man running towards the right, and a man running towards the viewer. The older children's figures were rated more highly than those of younger children, supporting previous research findings. Girls' figures received higher ratings than those of boys, contradicting previous claims that boys are more flexible in their drawings of figures in action. Japanese children's figures received higher ratings than those in the UK, suggesting that Japanese children are influenced by a greater exposure to graphic images in their school art curriculum and the widespread popularity of manga comics. The prediction that Japanese boys would make the greatest adaptations to their figures (since manga comics for boys contain more action figures) was not supported. As well as gaining higher ratings, the older children also constructed their figures in more complex ways than did the younger children. The figures drawn by girls and by the Japanese children were not constructed differently from those of boys or UK children; their higher ratings were attributed to their greater facility in the execution of their constructions.

Explaining ‘I Can’t Draw’: Parallels between the Structure and Development of Language and Drawing

“…The 'stick figure' is a conventionalized representation of a person. Indeed, cultures use diverse yet systematic ways of drawing people [Cox, 1998;Cox, Koyasu, Hiranuma, & Perara, 2001;Paget, 1932;Wilson, 1988], and some even have difficulty discerning what the American style stick figure represents [Wilkins, 1997].…”

“…They further examined the drawings of children throughout the world and found both consistency within and variability between the drawings of various cultures. For example, in Japan, children's drawings are highly consistent because they are imitative of Japanese comics [Cox et al, 2001;Wilson, 1988Wilson, , 1997Wilson, , 1999. Meanwhile, rectangular bodies are drawn by children in Islamic countries [Wilson, 1988;Wilson & Wilson, 1984] while bottle-shaped bodies were drawn by English children in the late 1800s [Sully, 1896].…”

“…Comics in Japan provide a rich visual language that children can acquire through imitation [Cox et al, 2001;Toku, 1998Toku, , 2001bWilson, 1988Wilson, , 1997Wilson, , 1999. Studies have shown that over two thirds of Japanese children's drawings are imitative of comics [Wilson, 1999], and nearly all Japanese 6-year-olds are capable of drawing complex graphic narratives in comics, yet less than half of 12-year-olds of other countries have this proficiency [Wilson, 1988].…”

Technological, elemental and colorimetric analysis of an engraved ochre fragment from the Middle Stone Age levels of Klasies River Cave 1, South Africa

“…Engravings, the result of cutting a design into any substance with the use of an implement, comprise the only durable category of potentially symbolic early material culture that represents the complete end product of the actions performed by its executor. As with drawings, engravings explicate the deepest subconscious state of mind of the artist (Freeman and Cox, 1985;Thomas and Silk, 1990) while, at the same time, visually 'organising' a shared culture (Cox et al, 2001). Contrary to other early symbolic manifestations, engravings can be formally described, compared and their differences measured from a range of technological and metric perspectives (Bosinski et al, 2001;.…”

Sex Differences in Scores on the Draw-a-Person Test across Childhood: Do They Relate to Graphic Fluency?

“…It has also been suggested ( Baldy, 2002 ) that boys and girls adopted diff erent attitudes toward a drawing task, with girls being more conformist, more applied, and attentive to details due to their willingness to respond to the assumed expectations of the examiner. Accordingly, girls' higher inclination to add details in their human fi gure drawing would result in higher scores at the Draw-a-Person Test, since this test mostly awarded points for the inclusion of specifi c detail (see Cox, et al ., 2001 ).…”