Young Children's Recognition and Use of the Vertical and Horizontal in Drawings

More evidence on size modification in spatial axes systems of varying complexity

“…Although only few children spontaneously construct viewpoint perspective (i.e., a diagonal spatial axes system in their drawings), it was assumed that nevertheless children would gain a deeper understanding of explicit spatial axes systems while becoming familiar in school with simple measurements of extensions and quantities in vector space. From previous research, we know that children can discriminate perspective, even though they also find the diagonal difficult to construct in drawing tasks other than perspective drawings (Ackermann-Valladao, 1987;Kosslyn, Heldmeyer, & Locklear, 1980;Olson, 1970Olson, /1996Perner, Kohlmann, & Wimmer, 1984). However, when the production obstacle of drawing in perspective was removed by using predrawn axes systems, the majority of 11-year-old children in Study 2 demonstrated their understanding of crossed axes systems by pronounced figure size modification.…”

Cubes are difficult things to draw

“…It could also be that young children find it difficult to draw a line obliquely on to a baseline. There is a fair amount of evidence that this is the case (Ibbotson & Bryant, 1976;Perner et al, 1984;Bayraktar, 1985), and the tendency to make an angle more perpendicular than it should be has become known as the 'perpendicular error'. There seem to be several explanations for the young children's rectilinear drawings, not all necessarily mutually exclusive: they may deliberately draw this form in order to show the construction of the object; their knowledge of the object may interfere with or prevent their attempts at drawing a perspective view; the difficulty in producing oblique lines militates against a perspective view even if the children intend to draw one.…”

Breakdown of spatial parallel coding in children's drawing

“…When children under 7 years of age draw chimneys on oblique roof tops or trees on a mountainside instead of drawing a vertical line attached at 45 degrees to the baseline they reliably draw the line towards 90 degrees (see Figure 1). This bias is highly robust and has been demonstrated experimentally in abstract copying tasks as well as in children's drawings of real scenes (Bremner & Taylor, 1982;Ibbotson & Bryant, 1976;Perner, Kohlmann & Wimmer, 1984; see also Freeman & Cox, 1985). It is important to note that when children produce this so-called perpendicular bias they are drawing a line that is not parallel to any of the local cues (baseline, sides and base of the paper or tabletop).…”

“…It is important to note that when children produce this so‐called perpendicular bias they are drawing a line that is not parallel to any of the local cues (baseline, sides and base of the paper or tabletop). Indeed, this bias is so strong that even when provided with a surrounding reference frame and/or a line that is parallel to the line to be copied this does not improve accuracy (Freeman & Kelman, 1981; Perner et al , 1984). However, the mere physical presence of parallel cues does not necessarily mean that these cues are actually taken into account.…”