Drawing Task Research Articles

Educational practices and peer-assisted learning: analyzing students’ interactive dynamics in a joint drawing task

Different schools apply different educational approaches, and different learning concepts interpret knowledge in different ways. The two dominant perspectives classify learning as the acquisition of knowledge, or as participation in school practices. In order to support teachers in choosing the educational method that best fits their teaching perspective, it is important to increase our understanding of underlying interactional processes. This study addresses this question, by analyzing the interaction between students during a joint drawing task. Forty-three grade three Italian students participated in this study: 22 students attended a classroom based on the acquisition metaphor of learning (teacher-centered approach), whereas 21 attended classrooms based on the participation metaphor of learning (Senzazaino: Without a backpack for School Communities). Students worked in pairs and each pair had to draw their school. Each session was video-recorded and transcribed. Students’ interactions were subject to micro-level analysis in terms of discourse moves, communicative functions and interaction sequence. Data substantially confirmed that the educational environment influences students’ interactive dynamics and communication patterns from the early grades onwards. Joint drawing was shown to be partially dependent on context. The theoretical and practical implications of this are discussed in the article.

Lesion Sites Associated with Allocentric and Egocentric Visuospatial Neglect in Acute Stroke.

Visuospatial neglect is a disorder that can often result from stroke and is characterized by an inability to attend to contralesional stimuli. Two common subtypes include allocentric (object-centered) neglect and egocentric (viewer-centered) neglect. In allocentric neglect, spatial inattention is localized to the contralesional side of an object regardless of its relative position to the observer. In egocentric neglect, spatial inattention is localized to the contralesional side of the individual's midline. The neuroanatomical correlates of each subtype are unknown. However, recent work has suggested that damage to temporal, inferior parietal, and occipital areas may result in allocentric neglect and that damage to frontoparietal areas may result in egocentric neglect. We used voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) to compare lesion location to behavioral performance on the conventional six subtests of the Behavioral Inattention Test (BIT) in 62 subjects with acute right hemisphere ischemic stroke. Results identified an anatomical dissociation in lesion location between subjects with neglect based on poor performance on allocentric tests (line bisection, copying, and drawing tasks) and on egocentric tests (star, letter, and line cancellation). VLSM analyses revealed that poor performance on the allocentric tests was associated with lesions to the superior and inferior parietal cortices, and the superior and middle temporal gyri. In contrast, poor performance on the egocentric tests was associated with lesions in the precentral gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, insula, and putamen. Interestingly, the letter cancellation test and average performance on egocentric tests were associated with frontal and parietal lesions. Some of these parietal lesion locations overlapped with lesion locations associated with allocentric neglect. These findings are consistent with suggestions that damage to temporal and parietal areas is more associated with allocentric neglect and damage to frontal lobe areas is more associated with egocentric neglect.

Diversity of approaches in assessment of executive functions in stroke: limited evidence?

Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide. Cognitive functions and, in particular, executive function, are commonly affected after stroke, leading to impairments in performance of daily activities, decrease in social participation and in quality of life. Appropriate assessment and understanding of executive dysfunction are important, firstly to develop better rehabilitation strategies for executive functions per se and secondly to consider executive function abilities on rehabilitation strategies in general. The purpose of this review was to identify the most widely used assessment tools of executive dysfunction for patients with stroke, and their psychometric properties.We systematically reviewed manuscripts published in English in databases from 1999 to 2015. We identified 35 publications. The most frequently used instruments were the Stroop, Digit Span and Trail making tests. Psychometric properties were described for the Executive Function Performance Test, Executive Clock Drawing Task, Chinese Frontal Assessment Battery and Virtual Action Planning — Supermarket, and two subtests of the Cambridge Cognitive Examination — Revised.There is a paucity of tools to reliably measure executive dysfunction after stroke, despite the fact that executive dysfunction is frequent. Identification of the best tools for executive dysfunction assessment is necessary to address important gaps in research and in clinical practice.

Representation of Romantic Love in Children's Drawings: Age and Gender Differences

AbstractThis study was designed to fill our current knowledge gap in children's representation of romantic love. To this end, we used a drawing task: 127 children ages 6 to 10 were asked to draw a person and a person in love. Performing content analysis, we identified seven graphic indicators used by children to depict romantic love in their drawings. As expected, results exhibited age and gender differences. First, older children used a higher number of graphic indicators than younger children. The use of each type of indicator (except for one) varied with age. Second, girls used a higher number of graphic indicators than boys. These gender differences were specific to three graphic indicators. Results are discussed in terms of children's developing representation of romantic love and of the potential impact of their socio‐cultural environment on this representation.

Blind drawing

One of the main problems faced by blind learners is lack of drawing technologies that support images and diagram drawing without the help of a sighted support worker. Even though some technologies have been experimented in the past, blind learners have not been keen on tactile drawing due to: the difficulty of the drawing task, the length of time taken to complete a simple task and the inefficiency of the drawing experience. This paper presents a blind drawing technology that introduces a drawing technique with screen navigation, sectioning and sizing. This will provide blind learner with an interactive drawing environment, which will improve the understanding of a concept or, a subject matter. It will contribute to the improvement of the overall quality of learning and drawing experience by mapping their mind images into objects and spatial information. This technique promotes an interactive and easy drawing environment to build objects, associations, layout information by zooming, navigation, and grouping. It will lead to future possibilities such as 3D world modelling, printing and multisensory integration of inputs and output methods.

COMPARISON OF LINE-DRAWING SKILLS OF 14 AGE-GROUP MODERATE LEVEL-MENTALLY-RETARDED STUDENTS

In this research, drawing skills -free drawing works and periodical rules drawing worksof the 14-age-group students at the 8th grade in secondary schools and those in level II. in Private Education Practice Centre have been compared, in regards to some variations. With the extent of research, at Seker Secondary school special training centre in Meram district in Konya Province, training exercise with a group of 14 students, 7 of whom are mentally retarded ones was conducted using direct teaching method, for 2 lesson time per week for different drawing task for each topic. Using direct teaching method during the second part of the education year 2012-2013 for being 2-lesson-time (40'+40') per week, totally 4 weeks, 4 lesson-time the studies of the researcher under his observation were evaluated in terms of both educational and design principles, with performance evaluation forms. In this research, documentary analysing method, one of the abstract research methods, has been used. In this research ,7 different drawing tasks were made under the topic of line, point, colour, stain and tissue. In this research, in two different topics, 'Free Drawing Works' and ' Periodical -Ruler Drawing Works' have been performed by using thin-medium-thick fiber tip pens. Performance assessments forms along with the curriculum were designed for each activity and were composed of pedagogical targets and artistic notifications under the extent of research. In these forms pedagogical targets and artistic notifications expected from pupils were assessed through filling in ''Yes-No'' boxes with “X”.

A Study Of Undergraduate Students Alternative Conceptions Of Earths Interior Using Drawing Tasks

Learning fundamental geoscience topics such as plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes requires students to develop a deep understanding of the conceptual models geologists use when describing the structure and dynamics of Earths interior. Despite the importance of these mental models underlying much of the undergraduate geoscience curriculum, surprisingly little research related to this complex idea exists in the discipline-based science education research literature. To better understand non-science-majoring undergraduates' conceptual models of Earths interior, student-generated drawings and interviews were used to probe student understanding of the Earth. Ninety-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with non-science-major college students at the beginning of an entry-level geology course at a large Midwestern university. Students were asked to draw a picture of Earths interior and provide think-aloud explanations of their drawings. The results reveal that students hold a wide range of alternative conceptions about Earth, with only a small fraction having scientifically accurate ideas. Students understandings ranged from conceptualizing Earths interior as consisting of horizontal layers of rock and dirt, to more sophisticated views with Earths interior being composed of concentric layers with unique physical and chemical characteristics. Processes occurring within Earth, such as "convection," were rarely mentioned or explained. These results provide a first-steps basis from which to further explore college students thinking and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on earth science teaching and geoscience education research.

An fMRI Compatible Touchscreen to Measure Hand Kinematics during a Complex Drawing Task

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was funded by the Northwood Trust and the Aberdeen Biomedical Imaging Centre, University of Aberdeen. GDW is part of the SINASPE collaboration (Scottish Imaging Network - A Platform for Scientific Excellence www.SINAPSE.ac.uk). The authors thank Baljit Jagpal, Nichola Crouch, Beverly Maclennan and Katrina Klaasen for their help with running the experiment and Dawn Younie and Teresa Morris for their help with recruitment and scheduling. We also thank the participants for their generous participation.

Characterization of fine motor development: Dynamic analysis of children’s drawing movements

In this study, we investigated children’s fine motor development by analyzing drawing trajectories, kinematics and kinetics. Straight lines drawing task and circles drawing task were performed by using a force sensitive tablet. Forty right-handed and Chinese mother-tongue students aged 6–12, attending classes from grade 1 to 5, were engaged in the experiment. Three spatial parameters, namely cumulative trace length, vector length of straight line and vertical diameter of circle were determined. Drawing duration, mean drawing velocity, and number of peaks in stroke velocity profile (NPV) were derived as kinematic parameters. Besides mean normal force, two kinetic indices were proposed: normalized force angle regulation (NFR) and variation of fine motor control (VFC) for circles drawing task. The maturation and automation of fine motor ability were reflected by increased drawing velocity, reduced drawing duration, NPV and NFR, with decreased VFC in circles drawing task. Grade and task main effects as well as significant correlations between age and parameters suggest that factors such as schooling, age and task should be considered in the assessment of fine motor skills. Compared with kinematic parameters, findings of NFR and VFC revealed that kinetics is another important perspective in the analysis of fine motor movement.

Sources of Variability in Children's Drawings

An experiment involving 90 students in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades investigated how visual examples and grade (our surrogate for age) affected variability in a drawing task. The task involved using circles as the main element in a set of drawings. There were two examples: One was simple and single (a smiley face inside a circle); the other, complex and dual (a fishbowl extending outside a circle and a bicycle using two circles). There were significant effects of both example and grade on variability. Between-grades, 3rd and 5th graders were more variable than 1st graders with the complex (but not the simple) set of examples. Within-grades, 3rd and 5th graders were more variable with the complex (compared to the simple) set of examples. First graders' variability levels did not change with examples. The discussion focuses on how examples have and should be used to increase variability in drawings of both younger and older children.

Motor planning and End-state Comfort in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism Spectrum Disorders are a cluster of disorders that effect communication, behavior and social ability. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released that Autism affects 1 in 88 U.S. children (2012). The increasing prevalence of Autism has led to an increase in the body of research regarding Autism, however, there has not been extensive investigation into how movement and motor skills may play a role in this population. Those that have looked into movement and Autism have found that children with Autism Spectrum Disorders may show impairments in motor planning and coordination. This study investigates motor planning and ability in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders through a battery of fine and gross motor tasks, as well as postural components through alteration of sensory input, in order to determine if their ability to plan and complete motor tasks differs from their typically developing peers. The study includes children with a diagnosis of an Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as typically developing children, between the ages of 5 and 13. The battery of tasks consisted of a dial-turning task, “Simon-Says” imitation task, drawing task, and beading task. Results show that children with Autism Spectrum Disorders show greater variability in hand selection during the dial turning task and a tendency to plan movements that are not in accordance with end state comfort. In addition, those withan Autism Spectrum Disorder displayed decreased ability to correctly imitate movements, had lower scores on both the drawing and sticker tasks, and took longer to bead the bracelet than their neurotypical peers.

The Effects of the Moroccan Advanced Regionalization Process in Western Sahara

In January 2010 the king Mohammed VI set up a new phase on the Moroccan regional policy with the creation of the Consultative Commission on Regionalism (CCR), entrusted with the task of drawing up a new regionalization model. The aim of reinforcing the Moroccan conflict-solution strategy of autonomy for the Western Sahara was one of the reasons behind the promotion of this regional reform. This article explores the potential impacts of the advanced regionalization law in the current situation of the Western Sahara conflict, analyzing to what extend the CCR's reform gives autonomy to the territory in conflict as well as other parallel political measures adopted by the Moroccan state.

Free-Drawing from Memory in Constructional Apraxia: A Case Series

Constructional apraxia is a neuropsychological and neurological impairment in activities such as building, assembling, and drawing. In this study data is presented on the performance of left and right hemisphere single focal stroke lesion participants on drawing tasks of houses, trees, and persons. Forty-one participants completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery including the house-tree-person drawing task. The drawings were then rated as exhibiting signs of neurological impairment or non-impairment by three evaluators without knowledge of the medical condition of the patient. There was 72% agreement between the three evaluators of the 123 drawings. Both an analysis of variance and case series analysis was used to examine the data. Patterns of concordance with a previously outlined detailed neuropsychological model of constructional apraxia were found and the implications of the results are analyzed in the context of the current neuropsychological literature.

Exercise Alleviates Autism Spectrum Disorder Deficits

Amongst other behavioral deficits, children afflicted with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) present an array of motor skill impairments. These deficits include problems the planning and performance of goal-directed behaviors. Aspects of motor planning ability in ASD-diagnosed children (aged 5-13 years) through application of a method consisting of fine and gross motor tasks and postural components through altering sensory input have been studied. It has been observed that ASD children expressed greater variability in hand selection during the “dial-turning task” and a tendency to plan movements that were not in accordance with ‘end-state comfort’. These children displayed a reduced ability to imitate movements correctly, presented lower scores for both the drawing and stickler tasks, and required longer time to ‘bead the bracelet’ than the comparison control group. The notion of end-state comfort refers to planning movements that allow individuals to attain comfort at task completion despite an initial phase of nocomfort/ discomfort. In children presenting normal development, a near completion of end-state performance is reached by 10 years-of-age.

Cognitive Function After Carotid Endarterectomy: Early Decline and Later Recovery.

To prospectively study neurocognitive performance following carotid endarterectomy (CEA) in various follow-up periods, taking into account the potential confounding factors. Thirty-six patients with carotid artery stenosis received CEA (group A). Thirty-one patients underwent surgery for femoropopliteal occlusive disease served as controls (group B). Neuropsychological testing and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) was repeated preoperatively, within 3 days and at 3 months after surgery. No patient had DWI evidence of procedure-related cerebral ischemia. Preoperative baseline scores of groups A and B were not statistically different in mini mental state examination (MMSE) or clock drawing task (CDT) score. MMSE and CDT scores were significantly reduced for patients in group A (p < 0.01) within 3 days after CEA. Differences of MMSE score (p=0.48) and CDT score (p=0.26) between baseline and 3 months after surgery in group A were not statistically significant. No statistically significant change of MMSE score and CDT score in group B was observed at 3 days and 3 months after the surgery. Degree of internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis (p=0.029) and duration of ICA clamping (p=0.031) were significantly higher in patients with cognitive impairment immediately after CEA than in those without that. Our study demonstrated cognitive decline for the patients with unilateral carotid stenosis at early stage after CEA and a restorative effect at 3 months after CEA. Postoperative early cognitive impairment might be associated with intraoperative temporary hypoperfusion and postoperative hyperperfusion, not the microembolic event.

INFLUENCE OF INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN BIOLOGICAL DRAWING IN SOKOTO STATE, NIGERIA

This study investigated the influence of instruction on the drawing performance of students in Sokoto State, Nigeria. The main objective was to find out whether students will improve in drawing performance if they are tutored on the salient features of the biological drawing. A pretest-posttest- the quasi-experimental design was used in carrying out the research. The population of the study was the Senior Secondary 1 students of Sokoto State. The estimated number of this group of students according to Ministry of Education Sokoto was 18,932. Purposive sampling technique was used to select six schools that participated in the study. The treatment involved 16 sessions of teaching focusing on various aspects of biological drawing and labelling. Biology Drawing Test (BDT) was administered on the subjects to test the students ’ acquired knowledge and application o f the knowledge in practical drawing and labelling tasks. The measures obtained from the instrument were subjected to statistical analyses of t-test to test the two hypotheses of the research. The findings showed that the experimental groups performed significantly better than the control group in both drawing and labelling skills. The research, among others, recommended that biology teachers should provide specific instructions on drawing and labelling to students for effective learning and understanding of biological concepts.

Estudio exploratorio de la interacción colaborativa infantil en la realización de dibujos libres

Objective. This paper presents an exploratory and micro-analytical study of peer collaboration among children in a free drawing task. The characteristics of this process were also analyzed according to age group and socioeconomic context. Method. Cross-sectional research in which 82 children were grouped into 41 dyads. They were 4-, 8- and 12-years-old, belonging to advantaged and disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts. Each dyad performed a collaborative free drawing task. The main instrument was observation. The interaction was analyzed from two approaches: social modality of execution, and specific verbalization. Each approach was coded by a different system of categories. The data was processed by factorial and cluster analysis. Results. Data showed three global interactive modalities: dissociative (mainly associated with 4-years-old dyads), mixed (collaborative-asymmetrical) and cooperative (the last two mainly associated with 8- and 12-yearsold dyads). Also detected were specific associations between mixed modality – disadvantaged context and cooperative modality – advantaged contexts. Conclusion. The study offers new evidence on two main issues in recent studies on peer collaboration: a) the focus on the micro-analysis of interaction; b) the growing interest on more open-ended tasks compared to traditionally addressed tasks (problem solving and tasks in science or mathematics). Also, the current paper allows analyzing action and language jointly in collaborative interaction, considering that they were studied separately in most of investigations.

The artist emerges: Visual art learning alters neural structure and function

How does the brain mediate visual artistic creativity? Here we studied behavioral and neural changes in drawing and painting students compared to students who did not study art. We investigated three aspects of cognition vital to many visual artists: creative cognition, perception, and perception-to-action. We found that the art students became more creative via the reorganization of prefrontal white matter but did not find any significant changes in perceptual ability or related neural activity in the art students relative to the control group. Moreover, the art students improved in their ability to sketch human figures from observation, and multivariate patterns of cortical and cerebellar activity evoked by this drawing task became increasingly separable between art and non-art students. Our findings suggest that the emergence of visual artistic skills is supported by plasticity in neural pathways that enable creative cognition and mediate perceptuomotor integration.

Analyses of pupils’ polygonal shape drawing strategy with respect to handwriting performance

Polygonal shape drawing tasks are commonly used in psychological, clinical and standard handwriting tests to evaluate children's development. Early detection of physical/mental disorders within subjects therefore requires objective analysis of the drawing tasks. This analysis would help to identify specific rehabilitation needs and accurate detection of disorders. Herein, the aim is to determine the correlation between the performance of polygonal shape drawing and levels in handwriting performance. In the reported experimentation two groups of participants aged between 6 and 7 were studied. The first group was identified by educational experts as being below-average writers within their age group whilst the second group was age-matched controls of average and above. Subjects were required to draw an isosceles triangle within a novel computer-based framework founded on a pen-based graphic tablet capture device. Subsequently, a sequential feature vector containing performance values relating to the order in which they drew the triangle was extracted from tablet data and compared against one another when presented in constructional strategy models. Statistical analyses and automated classification were applied to sequences to infer handwriting level based on the triangle drawing strategy. From our experiments drawing strategies showed significant differences in drawing end-point position, number of strokes used, and the frequency of particular drawing strategies amongst average and below-average handwriting groups. Additionally, a support vector machine classifier was used to detect group membership based on the triangle drawing strategy. From this exemplar polygonal shape drawing study it is revealed that there are details in children's drawing strategy which considerably differs in grouping based on handwriting performance.

Route learning in Korsakoff's syndrome: Residual acquisition of spatial memory despite profound amnesia

Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is characterized by explicit amnesia, but relatively spared implicit memory. The aim of this study was to assess to what extent KS patients can acquire spatial information while performing a spatial navigation task. Furthermore, we examined whether residual spatial acquisition in KS was based on automatic or effortful coding processes. Therefore, 20 KS patients and 20 matched healthy controls performed six tasks on spatial navigation after they navigated through a residential area. Ten participants per group were instructed to pay close attention (intentional condition), while 10 received mock instructions (incidental condition). KS patients showed hampered performance on a majority of tasks, yet their performance was superior to chance level on a route time and distance estimation tasks, a map drawing task and a route walking task. Performance was relatively spared on the route distance estimation task, but there were large variations between participants. Acquisition in KS was automatic rather than effortful, since no significant differences were obtained between the intentional and incidental condition on any task, whereas for the healthy controls, the intention to learn was beneficial for the map drawing task and the route walking task. The results of this study suggest that KS patients are still able to acquire spatial information during navigation on multiple domains despite the presence of the explicit amnesia. Residual acquisition is most likely based on automatic coding processes.