The effects of a communication task upon the representation of depth relationships in young children's drawings

Attempts to represent the occlusion of a farther object by a nearer one are infrequent in young children's drawings. Instead they typically draw the objects side by side or one above the other. This does not appear to reflect a limitation of skill, but rather a concern with the array of objects per se as opposed to the child's own particular view. Two experiments are reported which attempt to assess children's ability to produce view-specific drawings by creating a context that clearly demands such drawings. In a "communication game," drawings were produced by one child so that another could identify the chair he had been sitting on. In a first experiment, compared to a control condition this game produced significantly more view-specific drawings from 7- and 8-year-olds, but not from 5- and 6-year-olds. A second experiment with 5- and 6-year-olds was also ineffective in promoting view-specific drawings at this age.