On the relationship between children's perspective taking in complex scenes and their spatial drawing ability

Abstract

Depicting space and volume in drawings is challenging for young children in particular. It has been assumed that several cognitive skills may contribute to children's drawing. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between perspective-taking skills in complex scenes and the spatial characteristics in drawings of 5- to 9-year-olds (N= 121). Perspective taking was assessed by two tasks: (a) a visual task similar to the three-mountains task, in which the children had to select a three-dimensional model that showed the view on a scene from particular perspective and (b) a spatial construction task, in which children had to plastically reconstruct a three-dimensional scene as it would appear from a new point of view. In the drawing task, the children were asked to depict a three-dimensional scene exactly as it looked like from their own point of view. Several spatial features in the drawings were coded. The results suggested that children's spatial drawing and their perspective-taking skills were related. The axes system and the spatial relations between objects in the drawings in particular were predicted, beyond age, by certain measures of the two perspective-taking tasks. The results are discussed in the light of particular demands that might underlay both perspective taking and spatial drawing.