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

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the roles of emotional comprehension and representational drawing skill in children's expressive drawing. Fifty 7‐ to 10‐year‐olds were asked to produce two (happy and sad) expressive drawings, two representational drawings (drawing of a man running and drawing of a house) and to answer the Test of Emotion Comprehension (Pons & Harris, 2000). The expressive drawings were assessed on the number of expressive subject matter themes (‘content expression’) and the overall quality of expression on a 5‐point scale. Each of the representational drawings was measured on a scale assessing detail and visual realism criteria, and contributed to a single representational drawing skill score. In line with our predictions, we found that both emotional comprehension and representational drawing skill accounted for a significant variance in children's expressive drawings. We explain that children's developing emotional comprehension may allow them to consider more detailed and poignant expressive ideas for their drawings and that their developing representational drawing skill facilitates the graphic execution of these emotional ideas. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social Emotions in Children's Human Figure Drawings: Drawing Shame, Pride and Jealousy

“…Future research by overcoming the aforementioned restrictions should seek to clarify whether the reported development in children's ability to draw expressively is associated with the development of their representational skills (Jolley et al, ) and more precisely children's ability to modify their existing graphic schemas in order to depict the cues associated with each emotional state. Moreover, taking into consideration Brechet and Jolley's () preliminary findings indicating an association between emotion understanding and the quality of children's expressive drawing, further investigation of the potential links between these two abilities is a line of research worth pursuing. This could aid future attempts to develop a theoretical understanding of various aspects of children's expressive drawing (Brechet & Jolley, ).…”

“…Moreover, taking into consideration Brechet and Jolley's () preliminary findings indicating an association between emotion understanding and the quality of children's expressive drawing, further investigation of the potential links between these two abilities is a line of research worth pursuing. This could aid future attempts to develop a theoretical understanding of various aspects of children's expressive drawing (Brechet & Jolley, ).…”

“…The raters worked independently and were blind to the age and gender of the drawers. This scoring method in which raters make their judgements being aware of the depicted emotions is commonly used to similar studies (Bonoti & Misailidi, 2006;Brechet, 2013;Brechet & Jolley, 2014;Jolley, O'Kelly, Barlow, & Jarrold, 2013;Jolley et al, 2004). Reliability between raters was assessed by calculating the intraclass correlation (ICC; Shrout & Fleiss, 1979).…”

Assessing the concordance between child reports and adult observations of single and mixed emotion in children’s drawings of themselves or another child

“…Expressive strategies can be broadly classified (Brechet & Jolley, 2014;Burkitt, 2016;Picard & Gauthier, 2012) as literal, for example, where facial features are typically altered, content, where subject matter is altered to reflect a mood such as good or bad weather, and abstract, where formal properties such as line quality, composition and colour are varied in relation to emotion. Children represent single emotions, such as happiness or sadness, in more complex ways between the ages of four to five and eleven years (Brechet, Baldy & Picard, 2009;Burkitt & Barrett, 2010;Ives, 1984;Parsons, 1987;Picard, Brechet, & Baldy, 2007;Jolley, Fenn, & Jones, 2004;Jolley & Rose, 2008).…”

“…With age and developing levels of drawing ability (Brechet & Jolley, 2014), children tend to alter the content of figures and scenes in more metaphorical and abstract ways such as portraying a drooping flower to reflect sadness and bright weather to reflect happiness (e.g., Hammer, 1997;Ives, 1984;Jolley, 2010;Koppitz, 1966;Machover, 1949;Parsons, 1987;Picard, Brechet & Badly, 2007). Children also produce features in combination increasingly with age to depict emotion literally and in abstract ways (Burkitt, 2016;Picard et al, 207;Picard & Gauthier, 2012).…”