Abstract
BackgroundThe size and emotion effect is the tendency for children to draw people and other objects with a positive emotional charge larger than those with a negative or neutral charge. Here we explored the novel idea that drawing size might be acting as a proxy for depth (proximity).MethodsForty-two children (aged 3-11 years) chose, from 2 sets of Matryoshka (Russian) dolls, a doll to represent a person with positive, negative or neutral charge, which they placed in front of themselves on a sheet of A3 paper.ResultsWe found that the children used proximity and doll size, to indicate emotional charge.ConclusionsThese findings are consistent with the notion that in drawings, children are using size as a proxy for physical closeness (proximity), as they attempt with varying success to put positive charged items closer to, or negative and neutral charge items further away from, themselves.
Highlights
The size and emotion effect is the tendency for children to draw people and other objects with a positive emotional charge larger than those with a negative or neutral charge
Given that representing depth in drawings can be difficult, we further suggest that inconsistencies or reversals of the effect might reflect the difficulties children experience with producing depth or proximity cues in their drawings
In considering the literature on the size and emotion effect in children’s drawings we were motivated to propose that size might be acting as a proxy for depth in children’s drawings and that some of the inconsistencies in the findings might have occurred because the children are struggling to represent 3-demensions in a 2-dimentional drawing task
Summary
The size and emotion effect is the tendency for children to draw people and other objects with a positive emotional charge larger than those with a negative or neutral charge. Children understand emotions in drawings from an early age (≈ 4 years). The tendency to use object size as an indicator of emotional charge (positive or negative feelings) towards people and other objects is called the size and emotion effect (Cox 2005, p.145). Children (≈ 4-11 years) draw positive charged (nice or pleasant or liked) objects (e.g. people, apples, dogs) bigger than negative charged (nasty or unpleasant or disliked) and neutral charged (e.g. trees, tables, cars) objects (Burkitt et al 2003; Thomas et al 1989). No effect has been found where very strong negative or positive feelings might be expected to be expressed in drawings such as in patients with depression (Joiner et al 1996) or in children who have experienced military conflict (Jolley & Vulic-Prtoric 2001)
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