Alyson Davis

Children's colour choices for completing drawings of affectively characterised topics

BACKGROUND This study was designed to explore whether or not children systematically use particular colours when completing drawings of affectively characterised topics. METHOD Three hundred and thirty 4-11-year-old children were subdivided into three conditions, colouring in a drawing of a man, a dog, or a tree, respectively. The children completed two test sessions in counterbalanced order. In one session, children rated and ranked ten colours in order of preference. In the other session, children completed three colouring tasks in which they had to colour in three identical figures but which had been given different affective characterisations: a neutrally characterised figure, a figure characterised as nasty, and a figure characterised as nice. RESULTS It was found that, in all age groups and for all topics, the children used their more preferred colours for the nice figures, their least preferred colours for the nasty figures, and colours rated intermediately for the neutral figures. It was also found that, in all age groups and for all topics, black tended to be the most frequently chosen colour for colouring in the drawings of the negatively characterised figures. By contrast, primary colours were predominantly selected for the neutral figure, while a wide range of mainly primary and secondary colours were chosen for colouring in the nice figure. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that children are able to alter systematically their use of colour during picture completion tasks in response to differential affective topic characterisations, and that even very young children are able to use colours symbolically.

The effect of affective characterizations on the size of children's drawings

Previous research has yielded conflicting findings about the existence and the direction of the size changes which occur in childrens drawings when they are asked to draw topics which have been given an affective characterisation. The present study was designed to investigate whether children scale up the size of drawings of topics which have been given a positive characterisation, and scale down the size of drawings of topics which have been given a negative characterisation. Two hundred and fifty-eight children aged between 4 and 11 years completed three drawings of either a man, a dog or a tree. Each child drew a baseline drawing of a neutrally characterised figure, and two further drawings of a positively and a negatively characterised version of the same figure. It was found that the children drew the positively characterised topics larger than the neutrally characterised topics, and reduced the size of the negatively characterised topics relative to the baseline drawings. These patterns occurred at all ages and with all three drawing topics. Two possible explanations of the findings are discussed: the operation of an appetitive-defensive mechanism in children, and the acquisition of pictorial conventions.

The effect of affective characterizations on the use of size and colour in drawings produced by children in the absence of a model

Previous studies have revealed that children increase the size of drawings of topics about which they feel positively and use their most preferred colours for colouring in these drawings, and decrease the size of drawings of topics about which they feel negatively and use their least preferred colours for colouring in these drawings. However, these previous findings have been obtained in studies employing drawing tasks where planning and production difficulties have been minimized by asking the children either to copy or to colour in an outline stimulus of a figure provided by the experimenter. The present experiment was designed to examine whether children also alter the use of size and colour in their drawings in response to emotional characterizations when they are not constrained by the presence of a model. In all 253 children aged between four and 11 years were asked to produce drawings of a neutrally, a positively and a negatively characterized topic (either a man, a dog or a tree). It was found that the children consistently increased the size of the positively characterized figures, did not consistently decrease the size of the negatively characterized figures, used their most preferred colours for the positive figures, and used their least preferred colours for the negative figures. These findings are discussed in relation to the operation of an appetitive‐defensive mechanism and pictorial conventions.

Children's understanding of the pretence–reality distinction: a review of current theory and evidence

This paper provides an update on the current status of theory and evidence relating to childrens understanding of the pretence–reality distinction. The paper starts by highlighting the striking paradox between childrens early competence in pretence and their experiences of pretence–reality confusions as late as middle childhood. This is followed by a detailed review of various theories that have been offered to explain this phenomenon. Specifically, theories attributing the paradoxical findings to methodological differences between studies are reviewed and dismissed before considering the transmigration and availability hypotheses (Harris, Brown, Marriott, Whittall & Harmer, 1991; Johnson & Harris, 1994), the role of context and the childs emotional involvement in the pretence, and the pretence continuation account (Golomb & Galasso, 1995). It is argued that none of these theories alone can explain pretence–reality confusions and that these are best explained in terms of the combined influences of cognitive availability, empirical evidence of reality, context, affect and individual differences. Further research is necessary to fully explore the nature, cause and developmental trajectory of individual differences in this domain.

The Effect of Pre-Movement Delays on Pointing Accuracy in Middle Childhood

In adults, the introduction of a pre-response delay has been shown to affect accuracy in pointing tasks while leaving accuracy in perceptual matching tasks unaffected. Here, we report on the effect of pre-movement delays on pointing accuracy in 6–10-year-old children. Children of this age group are of particular interest as their reliance on visual cues to monitor and correct their reaches appears to change during this period of development. Nineteen children were asked to point to the location of a target light after a delay of 0, 1, 2, or 4 s following target extinction. Performance was measured in two conditions: (i) open-loop, where the child reproduced the target locations in complete darkness, and (ii) with visual feedback, where information about hand position was available. Errors in the direction and in the amplitude of each reaching movement were recorded separately. The results show that temporal delay significantly affects the pointing movements of these children. Accuracy (mean) deteriorated after only 1 s whereas the precision (standard deviation) of the responses deteriorated after 4 s. Errors in amplitude, but not errors in direction, were reduced by the provision of visual feedback. Taken together, the findings suggest that amplitude and directional components of pointing in childhood utilise different sources of information, which differ in the extent to which temporal constraints operate.

The influence of availability and affect on children's pretence

This study reports three experiments investigating childrens understanding of the distinction between pretence and reality. Previous research (e.g. Harris, Brown, Marriott, Whittall, & Harmer, 1991; Johnson & Harris, 1994) has suggested marked individual differences in childrens susceptibility to pretend-reality confusions. The present series of experiments explored the effects of cognitive availability and affect on pretence understanding. In Expts 1 and 2, 5-6-year-old children were asked to pretend that liked, disliked and neutral entities were inside either opaque (high availability) or transparent (low availability) boxes. The childrens responses when asked to select or reject the boxes was determined by the affect evoked by the entity. In Expt 3, children were asked to explain their behaviour towards the pretended entities. The results indicated individual differences between groups of children. Across all three studies the evidence suggests that some children as old as 6 years of age may experience temporary pretend-reality confusions which can be explained in terms of the effects of availability.

Effects of different emotion terms on the size and colour of children's drawings

Abstract Recent studies have shown that, when an affective characterisation is given to a topic, children adjust the size and colour of those topics in their drawings: children increase the size of drawings of topics characterised as “nice”, do not always decrease the size of topics characterised as “nasty”, and use differential colouring systematically to distinguish between “nice” and “nasty” topics in their drawings (Burkitt et al., 2003a, b, 2004). The present experiment was designed to examine whether these specific effects only occur with the terms “nice” and “nasty”, or whether they also occur with another pair of positive and negative terms, “happy” and “sad”. One hundred and two 4–7 year olds were divided into two groups and asked to draw either a baseline, “nice” and “nasty” man, or a baseline, “happy” and “sad” man. It was found that the valence of the characterisation (positive vs. negative), as well as the specific pair of words which was used, systematically influenced both the size and the colour of the childrens drawings. These results show the importance of understanding the exact emotions in question when interpreting childrens drawings on the basis of size and colour.

Individual and developmental differences in children's understanding of the fantasy-reality distinction

This research investigates childrens understanding of the fantasy-reality distinction. Expt 1 addressed the influence of cognitive availability on childrens beliefs about pretend entities by comparing 4- to 7-year-old childrens responses to prompted pretence or non-pretence tasks with both their unprompted behaviour and their verbal justifications. The results suggest that there are individual and developmental differences in childrens susceptibility to fantasy-reality confusion. Expt 2 was designed to further investigate childrens unprompted behaviours by adding a second (pre-task) period when the children were observed in the experimenters absence. In this study, the developmental differences and the relationship between childrens prompted and unprompted behaviours were no longer obtained, suggesting that childrens unprompted behaviours may be differently motivated depending on preceding events. The pattern of results across the two experiments suggests an interaction between individual and developmental differences in the effects of increased cognitive availability on childrens beliefs about the fantasy-reality distinction.

The Effect of Horizontal versus Vertical Task Presentation on Children's Performance in Coordinate Tasks

Empirical work on childrens ability to understand spatial coordinates has focused on the factors that increase childrens proficiency. When interpreting performance, it should be considered that presenting a coordinate task on a horizontal surface might constrain the responses that children make because some target positions are further away from the child than others. Vertical task presentation removes this constraint. Children aged 3 to 9 years were presented with an interpretative coordinate task administered on a touchscreen, presented in an egocentric-vertical position or egocentric-horizontal position. The results show that for 5- to 7-year-old children vertical presentation led to far more correct responses than horizontal presentation. Analysis of the childrens errors suggests that this may be due to the fact that vertical presentation suppresses childrens bias towards responding in relation to one rather than both coordinates. Taken together these findings contribute to understanding why childrens performance in xy coordination tasks is highly contextually sensitive.

The effect of simultaneous versus serial responding on children's ability to coordinate two dimensions

Previous research by Lidster and Bremner (1999) on young childrens ability to coordinate two dimensions has shown that performance on construction tasks (in which children have to give the correct coordinates for a point in space that is already known) is superior to performance on interpretation tasks (in which children are given a pair of coordinates and have to locate the correct point in space on the basis of these). The present study investigates the suggestion made by Lidster and Bremner that construction tasks may be easier due to the possibility that they can be solved by attending to only one dimension at a time. In this experiment 84 children between the ages of 3 and 6 years were given 16 trials of a construction task, which they were either asked to do by moving two pointers simultaneously or by moving the pointers sequentially. Overall there was no main effect of condition. However, some trials were affected by condition. These results are discussed in relation to Lidster and Bremners suggestions and Huttenlocher, Newcombe, and Sandbergs (1994) claims regarding the development of spatial understanding.