The Development of Duality Perception in Children’s Drawing: Adjusting Behavior in Scribbling

Abstract

　Classical studies on the development of drawing, which have discussed this development as the transition from meaningless traces to symbols or as mere traces of movement to perspective realism, have focused mainly on changes in the form of the drawn image. The present study did not focus on these forms or symbols but examined how the perception of duality of the picture develops as a fundamental question in the development of drawing. We conducted a longitudinal study where we observed a child’s drawing at home and focused on situations in which the nature of the surface affected the act of leaving traces. These situations included starting to draw, adjusting the surface position when it slipped, drawing tools running off from the surface edge, stopping and looking at the drawing, and adding stickers to the drawing. Based on the case studies, we discussed that the child perceived the invariant of the surface as drawable material, which was based on the contact between the surface and the drawing tool, and that she started perceiving the invariant of the display.