Drawing and the Non-verbal Mind

Lange-Kuttner, C. and Vitner, A. "Drawing and the Non-Verbal Mind: A Life-Span Perspective." Cambridge University Press, September 15, 2008.

Summary:

The editors discussed hundreds of experiments dealing with drawings, most focused on children.

Some interesting points of note are:

1. Young children (3-4 yrs) often cannot recognize their own drawings after some time has passed since the original. (p. 55)
   
2. Children often have a "constant depiction strategy", such as drawing everything as a sunburst or as a scribbled dot. The depiction looks closer to the actual object with age. (p. 64)
   
3. A drawing can be affected by the question and how the child interprets the objects, such as individual objects or in a group. Grouping of objects can happen more often if the objects are similar: "two circles" vs. "circle and triangle" (pp. 165-173)
   
4. People suffering from diseases such as semantic dementia often forget the distinguishing characteristic of an object they should be drawing after a short period of time. (Rhino -> generic animal, p. 286)

Discussion:

The findings presented are too numerous to list, so I simply mentioned the ones I found most interesting. Actual child or mental development would be difficult to measure using sketch recognition techniques (the drawings are simply too abstract). If I ever work with children, items 2 and 3 will probably be helpful with either distinguishing between children or simply with the phrasing of the questions to the children.