Young Children's Recognition and Use of the Vertical and Horizontal in Drawings

Abstract

PERNER, JOSEF; KOHLMANN, ROMANA; and WIMMER, HEINZ. Young Children's Recognition and Use of the Vertical and Horizontal in Drawings. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1637-1645. This study tested the hypothesis that young children's tendency to draw horizontal or vertical objects perpendicularly to an oblique surface reflects their preference for perpendicular drawings as conceptually correct depictions. 3-7-year-old children were presented with concrete materials (a chimney on a slanted roof, and the horizontal water level in a tilted jar) and abstract materials (plain straight lines). In 1 condition, subjects were asked to copy the vertical or horizontal lines. Subjects' drawings replicated previous findings that the younger subjects tend to copy the lines as perpendicular to the oblique baseline. To test whether this tendency is a specific drawing effect, or whether it reflects conceptual difficulties, children were asked to select the correct picture from between 1 that was correctly drawn and another that resembled the younger children's own renditions. In contrast to claims in the literature, and despite children's tendency in their own drawings, even the youngest did not show the expected preference for perpendicularly drawn lines but selected the correct representation. Conceptual problems were apparent only in the water-level selection task, where about 1/3 of subjects preferred the water level drawn perpendicularly to the sides of the tilted jar.