The texts listed in this section consist mainly of journal articles that have examined a wide range of influences on the development of both realistic and expressive drawing abilities. Early research indicated that children’s drawing ability develops through stages.
This idea has been questioned as children have been found to show a degree of flexibility at younger ages earlier than some stage theories would propose. The articles below examine a range of factors that can influence children’s drawing, from the development of fine motor and planning skills (Henderson & Thomas 1990; Thomas & Tsalimi, 1998; Toomela, 2002), cognitive development (Berti & Freeman, 1997; Karmiloff-Smith, 1990; Van Sommers, 1984, 1989) and the developing understanding of the relationship between art, the artist and the audience (Callaghan & Rochat, 2003; Freeman, 1995; Jolley & Rose, 2008; Jolley & Thomas, 1995).
Barlow, C. M., Jolley, R. P., White, D. G., & Galbraith, D. (2003). Rigidity in children’s drawings and its relation with representational change. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 86, 124-152.
Barrett, M., & Eames, K. (1996). Sequential development in children’s human figure drawing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 14, 219–236.
Berti, A. E., & Freeman, N. H. (1997). Representational change in resources for pictorial innovation: a three component analysis. Cognitive Development, 12, 405-426.
Braswell, G. S., & Callanan, M. A. (2003). Learning to draw recognizable graphic representations during mother-child interactions. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49 (4), 471-494.
Burkitt, E. & Barrett, M. (2010). Children’s graphic flexibility: A response to representational redescription. Journal of Creative Behavior, 44 (3), 169-190.
Callaghan, T. C. (1999). Early understanding and production of graphic symbols. Child Development, 70, 1314-1324.
Callaghan, T. C., & Rochat, P. (2003). Traces of the artist: Sensitivity to the role of the artist in children’s pictorial reasoning. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21, 415-445.
Chatterjee, A. (2004). The neuropsychology of visual artistic production. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1568-1583.
Cox, M. V. (1993). Children's drawings of the human figure. Psychology Press.
D'Angiulli, A., Miller, C., & Callaghan, K. (2008). Structural equivalences are essential, pictorial conventions are not: Evidence from haptic drawing development in children born completely blind. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2 (1), 20.
Davis, A. M., (1985). The canonical bias: Young children’s drawings of familiar objects. In Freeman, N., H., & Cox, M., V. (Eds.), 212 – 213. Visual order: The nature and development of pictorial representation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Davis, J. (1997). Drawing's demise: U-shaped development in graphic symbolization. Studies in Art Education, 38 (3), 132-157.
DeLoache, J. S. (1995). Early symbol understanding and use. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 33, 65-114.
Freeman, N. H. (1980). Strategies of representation in young children: Analysis of spatial skills and drawing processes. London: Academic Press.
Freeman, N. H. (1995). The emergence of a framework theory of pictorial reasoning. In C. Lange-Küttner (Ed.), Drawing and looking: Theoretical approaches to pictorial representation in children, 135-146. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Freeman, N. H., & Janikoun, R. (1972). Intellectual realism in children’s drawings of a familiar object with distinctive features. Child Development, 43, 1116-21.
Henderson, J. A., & Thomas, G. V. (1990). Looking ahead: planning for the inclusion of detail affects relative sizes of head and trunk in children’s human figure drawings. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 8, 383-91.
Hollis, S., & Low, J. (2005). Karmiloff-Smith’s RRM distinction between adjunctions and redescriptions: It’s about time (and children’s drawings). British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 623-644.
Jolley, R. P., Fenn K., & Jones, L. (2004). The development of children’s expressive drawing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22, 545-567
Jolley, R. P., & Rose, S. E. (2008). The relationship between production and comprehension of representational drawing. In Milbrath, C., & Trautner, H. M. (Eds.), Children's understanding and production of pictures, drawings and art: Theoretical and empirical approaches, 207-235. Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe & Huber.
Jolley, R. P., & Thomas, G. V. (1994). The development of sensitivity to metaphorical expression of moods in abstract art. Educational Psychology, 14, 437–450.
Jolley, R. P., & Thomas, G. V. (1995). Children’s sensitivity to metaphorical expression of mood in line drawings. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 335–346.
Karmiloff-Smith (1990). Constraints on representational change: Evidence from children’s drawings. Cognition, 34, 57-83.
Lambert, B. E. (2007). Cognitive Schemes and Scripts: Research Evidence from Children's Drawings. New Zealand Research in Early Childhood Education, 10, 69.
Lambert, B. E. (2007). Diagrammatic representation and event memory in preschoolers. Early Years, 27(1), 65-75.
Lewis, C., Russell, C., & Berridge, D. (1993). When is a mug not a mug? Effects of content, naming, and instructions on children’s drawings. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 291 - 302.
Moore, V. (1987). The influence of experience in children’s drawings of a familiar and unfamiliar object. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 221–229.
Pariser, D., Kindler, A., van den Berg, A., Dias, B., Liu, W. C., & Diaz, B. (2007). Does practice make perfect? Children's and adults' constructions of graphic merit and development: A crosscultural study. Visual Arts Research, 33 (2), 96-114.
Picard, D., & Gauthier, C. (2012). The Development of Expressive Drawing Abilities during Childhood and into Adolescence. Child Development Research, Article ID 925063, 7 pages, 2012. doi:10.1155/2012/925063.
Picard, D., Brechet, C. & Baldy, R. (2007). Expressive strategies in drawing are related to age and topic. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 31, 243 -257.
Picard, D. & Vitner, A. (2005). Development of graphic formulas for the depiction of familiar objects. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29 (5), 418 – 432.
Picard, D., & Vinter, A. (1999). Representational flexibility in children’s drawings: Effects of age and verbal instructions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17, 605-622.
Picard, D., Brechet, C. & Baldy, R. (2007). Expressive strategies in drawing are related to age and topic. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 31, 243 -257.
Pinto, G., Gamannossi, B. A., & Cameron, C. A. (2011). From scribbles to meanings: social interaction in different cultures and the emergence of young children’s early drawing. Early Child Development and Care, 181(4), 425-444.
Rose, S. E., Jolley, R. P., & Charman, A. (2012). An investigation of the expressive and representational drawing development in National Curriculum, Steiner, and Montessori schools. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(1), 83.
Stiles, J. (1995). The early use and development of graphic formulas: Two case study reports of graphic formula production by 2-to 3-year-old children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 18 (1), 127-149.
Thomas, G. V., & Tsalimi, A. (1988). Effects of order of drawing head and trunk on their relative sizes in children’s human figure drawings. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 191-203.
Toomela, A. (2002). Drawing as a verbally mediated activity: A study of relationships between verbal, motor, and visuospatial skills and drawing in children. International Journal Behavioral Development, 26, 234-247.
Van Sommers, P. (1984). Drawing and cognition: Descriptive and experimental studies of graphic production processes. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Van Sommers, P. (1989). A system for drawing and drawing-related neuropsychology. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 6, 117–164.
Zhi, Z., Thomas, G. V., & Robinson, E. J. (1997). Constraints on representational change: Drawing a man with two heads. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 275-290