Constraints on representational change: evidence from children's drawing

This paper uses children's drawing as clues to general constraints on internal representational change and flexibility. Fifty-four children between 4 and 11 years of age each produced six drawings. They were first asked to draw a house, and then to draw a house that does not exist. The same procedure was used for man and animal. The technique forced children into operating on their normal, efficient drawing procedures, and allowed the researcher to ascertain the types of constraint that obtain on representational change and flexibility. Striking developmental differences emerged between the 4- to 6-year-old age group and the 8- to 10-year-old age group. Changes introduced by the younger children involved deletions and changes in size and shape, whereas older children changed position and orientation of elements and added elements from other conceptual categories, resulting in ever-increasing inter-representational flexibility. Development is accounted for in terms of reiterated cycles of change from internal representations specified as a sequentially fixed list, embodying a constraint that was inherent in the earlier procedural representations, to internal representations specified as a structured, yet flexibly ordered set of manipulable features. The constraints are considered to be general and are compared with work on seriation and number in children, and on phonological awareness and musical ability in adults. The results are integrated into a general model of developmental change which is compatible both with initial modularity and with subsequent domain-general constraints.