Culture and Development of Pictorial Repertoires

Abstract

Even though Piaget's interest in graphic development was peripheral to his main focus on development of conceptual structures, his work in this area has greatly influenced generations of authors concerned with development in the pictorial realm. Two aspects of Piaget's have made a particularly strong imprint: the notion of development as a stage-like progression from the intellectual to visual realism, and the accompanying conception of artistic development as a unilinear phenomenon (e.g., Gaitskell, Hurwitz, & Day, 1982; Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1964; Luquet, 1977). In recent years, however, growing evidence pointing to a diversity of mental representational skills and competencies rather than the uniformal acquisition of a single conceptual structure has been offered by researchers exploring the child's theory of mind (e.g., Leslie, 1987; Wellman, 1990). Additionally, a number of authors concerned with the nature of artistic development have questioned the appropriateness of theories that neglect the possibility of development following more than a single, well defined path (e.g., Darras, 1985; Darras & Kindler, 1993, 1996; Golomb, 1994; Hagen, 1986; Kindler & Darras, 1994, 1997; Wolf & Perry, 1988). Among the problems noted with stage theories, focus on realism, lack of generalizability beyond the early childhood years, neglect of diversity of pictorial work produced within particular stage boundaries, and the lack of recognition of the significance of sociocultural determinants of development have been articulated (Kindler & Darras, 1997). The notion of pictorial repertoires (Darras, 1992; Wolf, 1994) has been supported by research that documented how a choice rather than a single rule, guides a child's drawing behavior (e.g., Bremmer & Moore, 1984). Our ambition has been to chart significant elements of pictorial repertoires as they emerge and expand, as well as to investigate the underlying mechanism of their construction. We were further interested by the phenomenon of an apparent cultural selection that often prompts the exploration of only very selected venues on the broad map of possibilities. What prompts the creation of repertoires and how these repertoires are explored, were the main interests of our investigation. The model that we propose is grounded in the understanding of development of pictorial representation as a semiotic process that occurs in an interactive sociocultural environment and results in pluri-media (graphic, vocal/verbal, and gestural) manifestations. Our model of pictorial developmental representation relies heavily on Peirce's semiotic (193135). One of the underlying assumptions that supports our model is the belief that all pictorial representational activity shares a communication potential. Whether it is conveying thoughts, ideas, facts, emotions, states, understandings, or interpretations, communication occurs through the use of icons, indexes and symbols, which, according to Peirce, constitute components of signs. References to various types of icons in the description of manifestations of pictorial behaviors are a direct result of our conceptualization of the process of the development of pictorial imagery in semiotic terms (Darras & Kindler, 1997). The recognition of sociocultural foundations of pictorial development that permeates our work extends from the of Vygotsky (1978) and his conception of the nature of human development. Recognition of the biological origin of development involving elementary processes on one hand, and the higher psychological functions, of sociocultural origin, on the other, as well as the distinction that Vygotsky made between development and learning, focused our attention on the significance of culturally and socially mediated learning in the development of pictorial representation. In construction of our model, we were also very cognizant of the fact that pictorial activity, especially in the early childhood years, is not a selfcontained phenomenon, but rather an element of a pluri-media process. …