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Children's developing ability to depict emotions in their drawings
1Department of Preschool Education, University of Thessaly, Argonafton & Filellinon str., Volos 38 221, Greece. fbonoti@uth.gr
Perceptual and Motor Skills
|December 15, 2006
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Art Therapy
Background:
- Understanding children's emotional expression is crucial for developmental and clinical psychology.
- Children's drawings offer a non-verbal medium for expressing complex emotions.
- Assessing the interpretability of children's emotional depictions is key.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the emotional expressiveness in drawings created by children.
- To determine which emotions are most accurately conveyed through children's artwork.
- To examine the relationship between age and the emotional expressiveness of children's drawings.
Main Methods:
- 55 children (aged 5–9 years) drew pictures representing specific emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear) and a neutral state.
- Nonexpert adult raters evaluated the drawings for their emotional expressiveness.
- A quantitative scoring system was used to assess how well each drawing depicted the intended emotion.
Main Results:
- Children's drawings were generally perceived as emotionally expressive by adult observers.
- Happiness and sadness were the most readily recognized emotions in the children's artwork.
- A positive linear correlation was observed between children's age and the perceived emotional expressiveness of their drawings.
Conclusions:
- Children's drawings serve as a valid and interpretable channel for emotional expression.
- The ability to convey emotions through art develops with age during childhood.
- Further research can explore therapeutic applications of art-based emotional assessment in children.
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