Children's expressive drawing strategies: the effects of mood, age and topic

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate whether the impact of mood state on children's choice of expressive strategies (literal and non-literal content and abstract) varies as a function of mood valence, age and topic to be drawn. The sample (N = 96) consisted of four groups of children aged 5, 7, 9 and 11years, respectively. Half of the children in each age group were induced with a positive mood state and the other half with a negative mood state. Following mood induction, children were asked to draw one of two topics, an animate (person) or an inanimate one (tree). The results showed that: (a) happiness and sadness activated similar expressive drawing strategies; (b) from the age of five years onwards children were able to use both literal and non-literal expressive strategies in their drawings; (c) non-literal content strategies were used more frequently compared to abstract ones by all age groups; and (d) topic had an effect on the choice of expressive strategies: children used more literal strategies for the depiction of the person and more non-literal ones for the depiction of the tree. The implications of these findings and future directions for research are discussed.

Keywords:

• children
• drawing
• emotion
• expressiveness
• mood induction

Notes on contributors

Plousia Misalidi works as an assistant professor at the Department of Primary Education of the University of Ioannina, Greece. Her research interests include: theory of mind, emotional and drawing development in childhood.

Fotini Bonoti is an associate professor in Developmental Psychology at the Department of Preschool Education of the University of Thessaly, Greece. Her current research activity focuses on children's drawing development and appreciation of pictures.

Notes

1. It must be reminded that children had been asked to rate their moods on a three-point rating scale at three different time points during the experimental procedure: before mood induction, immediately following the mood induction procedure and immediately after the completion of the expressive drawing task. Children in the ‘positive’ mood induction condition received one point if they said that they feel ‘a little happy’, two points if they reported that they felt ‘moderately happy’ and three points if they said that they felt ‘very happy’. Children in the ‘negative’ mood induction condition received a score of −1 if they said that they feel ‘a little sad’, a score of −2 if they said that they feel ‘moderately sad’ or a score of −3 if they reported that they feel ‘very sad’.

2. Parametric tests are not typically used with binary data (e.g. 0 and 1). However, researchers (Greer & Dunlap, 1997; Lunney, 1970) have shown that Analysis of Variance can be performed with such data, when the degrees of freedom of the error term are >40. This condition was satisfied in the present analysis.