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Effects of order of drawing head and trunk on their relative sizes in children's human figure drawings
Author(s) -
Thomas Glyn V.,
Tsalimi Athina
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1988.tb01093.x
Subject(s) - trunk , head (geology) , psychology , depiction , head and neck , developmental psychology , medicine , art , visual arts , surgery , ecology , geomorphology , biology , geology
Two experiments were performed to investigate the effect of the order of drawing the head and trunk on the common tendency to exaggerate the size of the head in drawings of a man made by children aged 3 to 8 years. In Expt 1, all children were first asked to make a free drawing of a human figure. As expected, most children spontaneously drew the head before the trunk and overestimated the size of the head. Contrary to expectation, the greatest overestimation was found in the older age groups, not the youngest. The drawings of the children who drew the trunk before the head portrayed relatively smaller heads. All children were then asked to draw a head to complete a predrawn headless man, thus reversing the normal order of drawing the head before the trunk. A narrow neckline on the predrawn figure reduced the size of the added head, particularly in the youngest age group. On a predrawn figure without neck cues, the 5–6‐ and 7–8‐year‐old groups drew heads which were, on average, correctly proportioned and, therefore, smaller relative to the trunk than the heads portrayed in their free drawings. In Expt 2, children were asked to start their drawings with either the trunk or the head. When the head was drawn first, the children often left insufficient space for a visually correct depiction of the trunk, which was then drawn relatively too small. When the trunk was drawn first, the children always left enough space for the head and the figures were on average correctly proportioned. Thus the typical overestimation of the head seems to reflect the children's planning rather than their concept of the human figure.