Provides examples from a study of six test segments of the television series "Alam Simsim," the Egyptian "Sesame Street," to illustrate how a systematic analysis of children's artwork can be used with other research tools to gain feedback from children. Shows how formative research is used to bring children into the production…

Investigates the use of three art-based instruments using imagery that measure children's cognitive development. Suggests that Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices, the British Picture Vocabulary Scale, and the Naglieri Draw-A-Person Test would be useful tools for art therapists to more systematically view children's drawings from a developmental…

Studies how Singaporean children differentiate in drawing between a sphere and an elongated, straight-sided ovoid. Tests Piaget's and Inhelder's beliefs that very young children are unable to differentiate in their drawings between differently contoured shapes. Finds that children are able to show the difference in drawings between the two shapes.…

The study was conducted with a group of 5 and 6 year old children in one playschool in Reykjavik, Iceland. The purpose of the study was to shed light on what life in an Icelandic playschool is like for the children attending the program, finding out their views on why they attend playschool, what they do and learn in playschool, what the adults do…

An important outcome of Singapore's education system is the development of creative thinking skills. This project investigates the impact of a creative dance unit on a class of Primary One (seven-year-old) children's usage of bodily kinaesthetic intelligence to solve problems. One key objective was for the researchers to observe something new,…

This study examined characteristics of human figures representing the self as drawn by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds and the presence of age or gender differences. A total of 150 children who were selected randomly from day care centers drew themselves on paper with crayons. There were equal numbers of boys and girls in each age group. Human figure…

Case's cognitive developmental theory was used in an investigation of unconstrained drawings by children 4, 6, 8, and 10 years of age. The objectives were: (1) to look for qualitative changes in drawing at these ages, (2) to relate whatever changes were found to qualitative changes in other tasks during the same period, and (3) to test whether a…

Children's drawings of "a house with a tree behind it" were analyzed for (1) developmental changes in graphic representation over a 3-year period; (2) relationship with Piagetian tasks (the Nebraska Wisconsin Cognitive Assessment Battery of the NC-124), Peabody IQ, and WISC-R; and (3) correspondence with the Luquet-Piaget sequence of…

A study of children's art as a function of gender of child, picture condition (drawings of same-sex versus mixed-sex dyads), and child-rearing setting (United States town, Israeli town, and Israeli kibbutz) confirms that boys, particularly Americans, are more aggressive, competitive, and hierarchical in their depicted relationships than are girls.…

Describes developments in strategies used by preschool and third grade children when drawing a three-dimensional model from observation. Concludes that children are able to devise unique responses to solving the problem of representation and that stage theory may be inadequate in explaining their performances. (Author/BSR)

Line drawings depicting expressive qualities that were created by subjects aged from 4 to 20 were examined to trace the development of expressivity. Results document a developmental trend from initial ability to produce abstract expression toward production of more complex multidimensional types of expression and increasing integration of…

A method was developed to encourage urban elementary school students to humanize their environments through artwork and stories. The 46 participants were students in grades 2 through 6 from an inner city neighborhood characterized by violence and urban crime. The children came to a neighborhood center once a week for an enrichment and tutoring…

Investigated impact of peer group acceptance and gender on quality of artwork produced by predominantly European-American friendship dyads of third through sixth graders. Found that high-accepted (according to sociometric ratings) dyads' artwork was rated higher in quality than low- and dissimilar-accepted dyads' artwork. Females raters…

Examines artwork of elementary school students to determine the interrater and inter-item reliabilities of ratings given by professional artists. The generality of creative performance for the artworks, and the topic of age trends in artistic creativity, are also considered. (BB)

Presents case studies of two children of four and five years who had experienced sexual abuse. Discusses the significance of their drawings in relation to the uncovering and treating of the trauma of sexual abuse. (RJC)