Content of Children’s Drawings:

Effects of Other People’s Interpretation of the Drawings

Abstract

  The present study investigated whether the content of children's drawings changed after they were provided with other people's interpretation of their drawings, and examined factors that may be correlated with such changes. Preschool children (N=65; 3 to 5 years old) engaged in 2 tasks: a false-belief task and a drawing task. The latter had a miscommunication condition and an acceptance condition. In the first drawing in the miscommunication condition, the children were asked by experimenter A to draw a figure (e.g., a red circle) as an object (e.g., a red apple). Experimenter B then incorrectly named the drawing (e.g., "it's a red light"). For the second drawing in this condition, the children were again asked by experimenter A to draw a red apple. In the acceptance condition, the first and third steps were the same as in the miscommunication condition, but instead of naming the drawing incorrectly, experimenter B accepted the children's description of what it was. The children who had been told that they had drawn (for example) a red light (miscommunication condition) adjusted their pictures more than the children who had been told that they had drawn (for example) a red apple (acceptance condition). The discussion suggests that understanding of other-mind may have been correlated with changes in the content of the children's drawings.