Open AccessRooms without walls: Young children draw objects but not layouts.
Author(s) -
Moira Rose Dillon
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of experimental psychology. general
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.521
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1939-2222
pISSN - 0096-3445
DOI - 10.1037/xge0000984
Subject(s) - depiction , psycinfo , psychology , object (grammar) , perception , cognitive psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , visual arts , medline , art , neuroscience , political science , law
Drawing is the epitome of uniquely human expression, with few known limits beyond those of our perceptual and motor systems and the cultures in and for which we draw. The present study evaluates whether the drawings of young children nevertheless reveal an early emerging bias in the depiction of 2 different foundational spatial categories: layouts and objects. Across 2 experiments following preregistered designs and analysis plans, 4-year-old children either sat in a colorful "fort" or looked at a small "toy" version of the fort and were asked to draw exactly what they saw. Children's drawings often omitted the walls composing the fort's layout but included the corresponding object parts for the toy. Symbolic representations of space in young children's drawings thus privilege small-scale objects over large and fixed layout geometry. A distinction between the intuitive geometries of layouts and objects leads to their differential treatment in both humans and other animals during everyday navigation. This distinction may also underlie the differential treatment of layouts and objects in children's drawings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).