Looking ahead: Planning for the inclusion of detail affects relative sizes of head and trunk in children's human figure drawings

Abstract

We investigated whether children preplan the sizes of head and trunk in their human figure drawings. We asked children aged 4 to 7 years to draw a man, and examined the effects of asking for specific details on the relative sizes of head and trunk. Asking children to depict details of a jacket in their drawing of a man resulted in drawings with a reliably larger trunk area relative to that of the head. Although asking children to depict teeth did result in a larger head relative to the trunk, this effect was not statistically significant. However, asking children to draw a man from the back so that his face could not be seen resulted in significantly smaller heads relative to the trunk. These results indicate that children can preplan the size of head and trunk in anticipation of the amount of detail they intend to include within the outline. The results also suggest that the overestimation of the size of the head commonly found in young children's figure drawing is partly a result of the greater amount of detail usually included in the outline of the head compared to the trunk.