Children drawing: Are young children really scribbling?
- 1 January 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Early Child Development and Care
- Vol. 18 (1-2), 1-39
- https://doi.org/10.1080/0300443840180101
Abstract
Most research on children's drawing concerns itself with analyzing configural end products, whilst all that precedes them is dubbed “scribbling”, and has received scant attention. This paper, based on detailed longitudinal and cross‐sectional studies, puts forward evidence which suggests that the child builds iconography on a substratum of symbolizations which are as much to do with movement and time as they are with configuration. The paper describes how the child experiments with 2D representation much earlier than has been commonly accepted, before and during the “scribbling stage”. Investigations made by the child at this time include those which monitor and represent the movement of imagined objects through space and time. Differing, interacting modes of representation are described, hitherto ignored by most investigators, which are mutually reciprocal in their contribution to the foundations of later iconography. More than this, these experiments aid the child in understanding the nature of the world. The discussion is placed within a developmental context which starts from the child's early mark‐making experience, where drawing defines basic axes and trajectories of body dynamism. From there, the emergence of different modes of representation leads to depictions of a topological nature. Transition from topological space to early (and rather startling) configural representation is described, as this is based on discoveries made by the child in the so‐called “scribbling stage”. Implications for childcare and education are considered.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- Getting the Drawing to Look Right as Well as to Be Right: The Interaction Between Production and Perception as a Mechanism of DevelopmentPublished by Elsevier ,1984
- The Role of Conscious Knowledge in the Development of Drawing AbilityArt Education, 1983
- Children DrawingPublished by Harvard University Press ,1977
- Le dessin enfantin est-il une écriture ?Enfance, 1974