Age-graded Judgements of Children's Drawings by Children and Adults

Abstract

A study was conducted to explore the development of drawing abilities in children. One hundred and eighty-five children aged 5-10 years and 27 adults had to rank intra-individual series of man and woman drawings according to the age sequence in which they had been drawn. Of interest was whether the accuracy of the children's judgements would vary with the age level of the drawings to be judged. A further aim was to yield information on the cues children use in the ranking of drawings on an age-graded scale. The results showed that even the youngest children were able to judge the correct age sequence at above chance levels. However, their rankings were more erroneous than those of older children and of adults, across all age levels of the drawings. Contrary to older children and adults, judgements of the youngest children relied partly on invalid criteria, or they underrated the importance of valid criteria. It was concluded that deficiencies in children's drawings have to be attributed to insufficient performance knowledge and/or performance capacities rather than to an inappropriate representation of the cultural standards.