Drawings of Emotionally 71

Characterised Figures by
Children from Different
Educational Backgrounds
Esther Burkitt, Martyn Barrett and Alyson Davis

Abstract

Previous research has shown that children
systematically alter the size and colour of their
drawings in response to the emotional character
of the figures which they draw. However, these
findings have been demonstrated only with chil-
dren receiving mainstream Western education.
This experiment was designed to investigate
whether children receiving a different kind of
education also use scaling and colour differen-
tially for depicting figures of contrasting
emotional significance. 76 children, 44 children
from mainstream schools (21 boys, 23 girls) and
32 children from Steiner schools (15 boys, 17
girls) were divided into two age groups, with 38
children in the younger age group (mean age 4
years 7 months) and 38 in the older age group
(mean age 6 years 8 months). All children
completed three drawings of differentially char-
acterised human figures: a neutral, a happy, and
a sad figure. Children from the mainstream
schools drew larger figures overall, but educa-
tional background did not interact with the
specific emotional character of the figures in
producing these scaling changes. However,
there were differences between the two educa-
tional groups in relation to the colours used for
the negatively characterised figures. The findings
are discussed in terms of the need to further
understand the role of the educational system in
mediating children’s depictions of emotional
character in their drawings.

JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005

72 Introduction
Esther Burkitt, Children draw, they like to draw, and there is an
Martyn Barrett
and Alyson Davis inherent enjoyment in the motor activity related
to drawing in early and middle childhood [1].
Parents look at the drawings of their children to
see whether there is a sense of joy or sadness in
the pictures, people generally regard children’s
drawings as charming and innocent, and a wide
range of emotional terms is generally used for
referring to the contents and characteristics of
children’s artwork. Whilst it is known that enjoy-
ment often goes into the production of children’s
drawings, and that emotional terms are used by
adults to describe these pieces, very little is
known from a reliable research base about how
children’s emotions might shape the specific
contents of their drawings.
The literature reveals the widely held view that
the process of producing a piece of artwork
involves the operation of more than simply cogni-
tive and motor-procedural factors [2]. The view
that emotional and communicative components
are involved both in drawing production and in
assessing the final drawn product is often used
as the basis for the continued use of drawings in
a wide range of professional settings [3]. Art ther-
apists work with clients basing therapeutic
discussion around the drawing process and prod-
uct [4], clinicians are inclined to interpret drawings
for signs of the inner feelings of patients and to
generate discussions with vulnerable groups [5],
and forensic psychologists examine children’s
drawings in order to ascertain whether more
information is contained within and conveyed by
children’s drawings of a witnessed event
compared with their verbal reports [6]. More
generally, educationalists and parents alike often
form impressions as to the well-being and devel-
opment of children, and about children’s feelings
towards objects in their world, on the basis of
their drawings.
Although there has been extensive interest in
the ways in which children’s drawings might be
interpreted for emotional information about the
artist, and the ways in which children’s drawing
development may aid their expressive and
communicative development [7], research to
date generally suffers from a lack of a systematic
approach to substantiate such views. Attempts
have been made to validate the interpretation of
children’s drawings for insights into the person-
ality of the child [8], the child’s current mood state
[9], and to glean an understanding of the signifi-
cance drawn topics may have for the child [10].
A more specialised view about the possible
clinical-projective use of children’s drawings
began to emerge in the 1940s. This approach
was based on the assumption that children
project their emotions, motives, personalities and
self-images into their drawings. It was believed
that drawings could be used to assess personal-
ity and psychological states, and could be used in
clinical and psychiatric assessment. For example,
Machover [11] introduced a test based on human
figure drawing, with the analysis of the drawing
being based upon the number, size and shape of
body parts, the orientation of the figure, clothing,
background, etc. Conclusions were drawn about
the child’s self-esteem, significant relationships
with others and psychosexual development.
This strand of enquiry highlights the possibility
of interpreting children’s drawings reliably for infor-
mation about the child, yet, as the related research
did not take into account the children’s develop-
mental stage, it is highly possible that the features
depicted in these drawings were no more than the
often strange features depicted at classic stages
of drawing development [12]. Thus, whilst
Machover and others working in this tradition
claimed that their interpretations were validated
against clinical experience, other ways of testing
the reliability and validity of their conclusions are
not provided, leaving doubt about the validity of
projective theories of children’s drawings.
These early investigations assumed that draw-
ings provide a privileged access to the child’s
personality or emotional state, but the lack of
rigour in the research base did little to give a
substantial basis to such claims. As Freeman [13]
and others [14] have shown, children’s drawings
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
are not simple print-outs of their mental state
representations. Instead, producing a drawing
involves numerous cognitive and motor
processes and skills by means of which the child
plans and executes that drawing.
Indeed, many of the features and curious
distortions which may be present in children’s
drawings have since been shown to be a result of
limitations in cognitive planning and motor execu-
tion rather than expressions of the child’s
emotional state or personality. Thus, research in
this area needs to account for children’s drawing
ability, level of motor-cognitive development, and
emotional attitude towards topics within the
drawing situation. This is indeed a complex task,
yet the complexity of the process of how chil-
dren’s drawings are shaped and interpreted is a
necessary challenge to anyone interested in
understanding what children are attempting to
represent through their drawings, both in func-
tional and symbolic terms [16].
Systematic research in this field has emerged
more recently with a change of focus.
Researchers have begun to look at how topics
that are significant in children’s lives, and topics
that have been given emotional descriptions in an
experimental setting, are depicted. This research
has focused on investigating whether there are
any systematic differences in children’s drawings
strategies depending on whether the child views
the topic as positive or negative. Fox & Thomas
[17] and Thomas et al [18] have reported studies
suggesting that irrespective of the role of the
cognitive and motor processes and skills, there
may still be an impact of the child’s emotional
state upon the size of a drawing. They found that
stimuli which had been described as ‘nasty’ were
drawn significantly smaller than stimuli which had
been described as ‘nice’. They proposed that as
this effect only occurred with stimuli of men,
rather than with apples, the most plausible expla-
nation was that the children were potentially
scared of the nasty men, and that a defensive-
appetitive mechanism was therefore responsible
for the effect.
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
However, a sequence of studies conducted by 73
Jolley [19] failed to replicate these findings. This Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
led Jolly to claim that these effects were unreli- and Alyson Davis
able, and that there is no evidence either for the
operation of a defensive-appetitive mechanism
(where children reduce the size of threatening
topics to increase perceived distance from the
threat, and increase the size of positive topics to
increase the perception of positivity) or for the use
of acquired pictorial conventions for the depiction
of nice and nasty figures. However, the conflict-
ing findings in this field were probably due to
methodological differences and limitations, for
example, differences in the research designs
used, the precise instructions used, and the fail-
ure to include independent measures of
children’s positive and negative affect towards
the drawn figures.
More recently, Burkitt et al [20] have shown
that reliable phenomena relating to whether chil-
dren view a figure as being positive or negative do
indeed occur in relationship to the use of both
figure size and colour. Children have been found
to consistently increase the size of positively char-
acterised stimuli, but to not always decrease the
size of negatively characterised stimuli [21].
Children have also been found to vary the use of
colour in their drawings in relation to both how
they feel about the colour and the emotional char-
acter of the topics which they are representing
[22]. This work shows the need to know more
about the child (for example, their colour prefer-
ences) than simply looking at their drawing to see
whether drawing strategies have been altered as
a result of an emotional view of the topics.
With a few exceptions, there has been a
paucity of research which has systematically
examined how the drawing strategies children
use to depict emotion are influenced by the draw-
ing context and by the exact cues provided in the
drawing situation. Whilst the wealth of literature
exploring children’s perceptions of mood and
metaphor in drawings contains some investiga-
tions which apply a rigorous and systematic
paradigm [23], the effect of the emotional
74 salience of topics depicted by children and the
Esther Burkitt, role of emotional and communicative aspects in
Martyn Barrett
and Alyson Davis terms of drawing production have been largely
overlooked. This may be due to the fact that draw-
ings are complexly determined. Yet this only
highlights the need to explore further how
emotional components may act to shape, and
appear in, children’s drawings.
In is noteworthy that the more rigorous
research to date that has explored the effects of
emotionally describing figures for children to draw
has only examined children from mainstream
educational backgrounds. Consequently, the
present experiment was designed to assess
whether similar effects occur amongst children
who experience contrasting educational systems.
Cultural and educational influences on
children’s drawings
Whilst research has been conducted looking into
the effects of the educational system on chil-
dren’s human figure drawings [24], most of this
research does not examine whether schooling
encourages differential depictions of emotional
character. It is known that when art education is
not a salient feature in cultures, children’s draw-
ings are less representational [25]. For example,
Bedouin children’s drawings lack much detail
[26], yet the term ‘representational’ in this sense
does not mean a lack of emotional representation
as there may be a metaphorical representation of
the emotion associated with the figure instead.
Whilst there are complications for cross-
cultural research (for example, whether drawing
is valued similarly by the cultures under study, and
whether the given topics occupy a similar status
across societies) [27], and to a certain extent for
research examining educational differences as
well, existing research indicates that formal
education is indeed likely to affect the form of chil-
dren’s human figure drawings. This is not
surprising, when it is considered that children
often learn from observation, copying and instruc-
tion [28]. The classroom is an ideal forum for such
processes to take place.
The possibility that education might have an effect
specifically upon the use of size in children’s draw-
ings has received very little attention to date. One
exception is a study by Aronsson & Andersson
[29], who studied children’s drawings of them-
selves and their teachers in a classroom setting.
The children formed three groups: Tanzanian chil-
dren attending traditional schools, children living
in refugee settlements, and Swedish children who
attended small town schools. They found that the
children in the more child-centred (Swedish)
educational system drew larger children than
those in the more teacher-centred systems. The
authors proposed that scaling in children’s draw-
ings indicated social-value systems related to a
traditionality–modernity continuum. These results
are in line with the literature claiming that children
draw subjectively salient figures larger than less
important figures [30], and indicate that size
change may also vary as a function of the type of
education received. In order to assess drawing
behaviour, however, it is important to ascertain
whether phenomena occur reliably across differ-
ent groups of children. The present study
assessed the impact of educational system on
these drawing strategies, using an experimental
paradigm which has consistently shown that chil-
dren in mainstream Western education
systematically alter the size and colour of figures
which they regard as having contrasting
emotional characters.
For the purposes of this study, it was decided
to examine the drawings of children attending
Steiner schools, which offer an educational
system based on the principles of Rudolf Steiner
[31]. These children were chosen due to the
contrasting nature of their schooling compared
with that received by children in mainstream
schools in Western cultures. Art education in the
Steiner system specifically follows a different
curriculum from that used in mainstream
schools. Steiner art education, particularly in the
early years, is concerned predominately with
child-centred exploration of colour and forms,
compared with formal Western art instruction
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
which emphasises attention to details and visual Table 1: Mean age and age range of children in 75
problem-solving [32]. Steiner children are gradu- each experimental group in years and months Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
ally introduced to line drawing only after the age and Alyson Davis
of 8.This is not the case in mainstream schools. Experimental Group
Even though the debate continues over how to Mainstream Steiner
combine expression and realism in mainstream (N=44) (N=32)
education, very young children in mainstream
Young Young
schools are still taught to focus on the outlines of
(N=22) (N=16)
the objects which they draw, with an emphasis
M=4y7m M=4y7m
on realism over exploration [33].
Range=4y2m-5y2m Range=4y2m-5y3m
The sharpest contrast between the mainstream
and Steiner educational systems occurs around Old Old
age 6. Steiner children explore colour and form at (N=22) (N=16)
this age, whilst children in mainstream schools are M=6y7m M=6y8m
already being encouraged to focus on realistic Range=6y4m-7y7m Range=6y3m-7y5m
detail instead. Thus, in the present experiment, two
age groups falling either side of this age point were were used by children in both groups. Drawing abil-
used, in order to explore how children’s drawings ity was measured using a five- point Likert scale.
of affectively characterised figures develop under
these two different educational regimes. Procedure
The present study was therefore designed to All children completed one test session in which
explore whether children from these two differ- they were asked to draw three men. All children
ent educational backgrounds would exhibit the drew the baseline uncharacterised drawing first,
same pattern of size change, with positively char- followed by two drawings of differentially char-
acterised figures being drawn larger than acterised men presented in counterbalanced
negatively and neutrally characterised figures. order using the following instructions.
The study also investigated whether these two
groups of children would exhibit a similar use of Baseline drawing
colour for completing their drawings of unchar- I’d like you to draw a man. Use just one of these
acterised, happy and sad men. colours. Draw the whole man as well as you can and
colour him as well as you can.
Method
Participants The first drawing was removed, and a second
76 children were tested. 44 children (21 boys, 23 sheet of A4 blank paper was placed in front of the
girls) formed the mainstream group. The Steiner child. The range of crayons was left in place. The
group consisted of 32 children (15 boys and 17 following happy and sad drawing tasks were
girls) selected from Steiner schools across administered in a counterbalanced order.
England. The age and range of children in each
group is shown in Table 1. Children in each educa- Happy drawing
tional group had either only attended mainstream Now, think of a man who is a very very happy man,
schooling or Steiner schooling within the UK. and who is very pleasant and friendly to everyone.
Draw the man, remembering what a happy person
Materials he is. Use just one of these colours. Draw the whole
10 block crayons (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, man as well as you can and colour him in as well as
purple, pink, white, brown and black) and A4 paper you can.

JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005

76 Table 2: Mean surface area (cm2) and standard deviations (SD) for each drawing
Esther Burkitt, type for each educational group
Martyn Barrett
and Alyson Davis
Drawing Type
Baseline Happy Sad Grand Means
Mainstream 51.05 68.45 52.68 57.39
(N=44) (SD=43.6) (SD=48.99) (SD=42.92) (SD=36.97)
Steiner 26.57 34.55 21.92 27.68
(N=32) (SD=20.28) (SD=25.83) (SD=22.56) (SD=20.53)
Grand Means 40.74 54.18 39.73 44.88
(N=76) (SD=37.54) (SD=43.99) (SD=38.73) (SD=34.29)

The child’s second drawing was removed, leav- Discrepancies were resolved by recounting by
ing the crayons in place, and a new plain piece of both judges, and all drawings were included in
paper was provided. the analysis.

Sad drawing Results: Summary of main findings

Now, think of a man who is a very very sad man, and
who is very mean and unfriendly to everyone. Draw
the man, remembering what a sad person he is. Use
just one of these colours. Draw the whole man as
well as you can and colour him in as well as you can.
Drawing ability
Children’s drawing ability was measured by class
teachers using the following five-point scale:
Please rate (child’s name) level of drawing ability
compared with the average drawing ability of the
year group.
Very below average
Below average
Average
Above average
Very above average
Measurements
Drawing height and width were measured in
centimetres from the furthest vertical and hori-
zontal points. Surface area was measured using
centimetre grid squares. A second judge
measured the surface area of all of the drawings
from each age group. 97% inter-judge reliability
was obtained for the Steiner group’s drawings.
The data from the mainstream and Steiner
groups were compared to examine the effects of
different educational background, whilst
receiving happy and sad affective topic charac-
terisations, and using block crayons to complete
the drawings. All children successfully completed
the range of tasks. Drawing ability was analysed
using a 2 (age group) x 2 (educational group) x
(drawing ability) repeated measures ANOVA, and
no main or interaction effects were found. This
factor was thus excluded from further analysis.
The data were screened for possible order
effects, and none were found. Thus, order was
also excluded from the following analyses.
Drawing size for each drawing type and
educational group
Surface area (see Appendix 1 for statistical
analysis)
Overall, as shown in Table 2, happy drawings were
larger than both the baseline and sad drawings
from children from both educational backgrounds
and children in the mainstream group produced
larger drawings overall than the Steiner group.

JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005

Table 3: Mean height (cm) and standard deviations (SD) for each drawing type for each age group 77
Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
Drawing Type Grand Mean and Alyson Davis
Baseline Happy Sad
Mainstream 51.05 68.45 52.68 57.39
(N=44) (SD=43.6) (SD=48.99) (SD=42.92) (SD=36.97)
Steiner 26.57 34.55 21.92 27.68
(N=32) (SD=20.28) (SD=25.83) (SD=22.56) (SD=20.53)
Grand Means 40.74 54.18 39.73 44.88
(N=76) (SD=37.54) (SD=43.99) (SD=38.73) (SD=34.29)

Youngest 15.47 18.02 13.87 15.79

(N=38) (SD=7.32) (SD=7.94) (SD=7.44) (SD=7.14)
Oldest 14.34 15.87 16.02 15.41
(N=38) (SD=5.95) (SD=6.19) (SD=6.99) (SD=5.59)
Grand Means 14.91 16.95 14.95 15.60
(N=76) (SD=6.65) (SD=7.16) (SD=7.25) 6.37

Height (see Appendix 2 for statistical analysis)
As shown in Table 3, only the youngest group
produced happy drawings that were significantly
taller than the baseline and sad drawings. In addi-
tion, the youngest age group drew taller drawings
than the oldest age group for the baseline and
happy drawings. There was one key difference
between the drawings of children from the two
educational groups, namely, the mainstream chil-
dren produced taller drawings overall than the
Steiner group.
Width (see Appendix 3 for statistical analysis)
It was found that the happy drawings were signif-
icantly wider than both the sad and baseline
drawings. It was also found that children in the
mainstream group produced wider drawings
overall than children in the Steiner group.
Children’s colour choices for the three
drawing tasks
Children’s responses for each drawing type were
analysed separately using correspondence analy-
sis across each educational group and each age
group (see Appendix 4 for a description of the
statistical procedure). There were no significant
dimensions in the correspondence analyses
comparing the younger and older children’s draw-
ings. There were also no significant dimensions
in the correspondence analyses comparing the
mainstream and Steiner children’s baseline and
happy drawings. However, two significant dimen-
sions were found in the correspondence analysis
comparing the mainstream and Steiner children’s
drawings of sad men (c2(10)=25.05, p<0.05;
c2(7)=18.95, p<0.05). As shown in Figure 1,
green, orange and blue were more closely asso-
ciated with the mainstream children’s sad men
than with the Steiner children’s sad men, and
yellow was more closely associated with the
Steiner children’s sad men than the mainstream
children’s sad men.
Discussion
Overall, the children increased the surface area of
the happy men from baseline size but did not
reduce the size of the sad men from the baseline
figure size. Only the youngest children drew
happy men taller than sad men. This was found
for both mainstream and Steiner children, indi-
cating that this pattern of size change may occur
irrespective of educational background. This

JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005

78
Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
and Alyson Davis
study has therefore confirmed that size changes
following positive figure characterisation are
more consistent than size changes following
negative figure characterisation. This is in line
with previous research attesting to positively
salient characters being drawn larger than base-
line figures [34]. However, the findings offer no
support for research which suggests that nega-
tively salient figures are minimised in children’s
drawings [35], casting doubt on the claim that
children operate either on a pictorial convention
or on the basis of a defensive mechanism [36]
when depicting characters which they hold in a
negative regard.
It is interesting to consider why this pattern of
scaling effects is found with children who have
received different types of art education. If chil-
dren are responding from an acquired pictorial
convention, they may have acquired the conven-
tion either in the classroom, or from broader
cultural and familial influences. Even though chil-
dren in the present study had been screened for
attendance exclusively of mainstream or Steiner
schooling, this does not rule out the possibility
that children had been taught or learned certain
principles at home, where there is less control
over the influences to which children attend. The
consistency across educational groups could
also be attributable to influences of belonging to
the same general culture, where children are
susceptible to similar media images and social
norms. It would therefore be interesting to exam-
ine whether children attending either traditional
or non-traditional schools in non-Western cultures
produce a similar pattern of results.
There was some evidence that educational
group influenced the size of children’s drawings,
but independently from the specific type of affec-
tive characterisation describing the figures. The
mainstream children produced larger, taller and
wider figures overall than the Steiner children.
The Steiner schooling system is based on person-
centred and child-centred activities, and on the
basis of Aronsson & Andersson’s findings [37], it
might have been anticipated that this would
encourage the Steiner children to draw larger
figures, if size changes are related to the exag-
geration of culturally more salient figures. This
was not the case, however, suggesting that picto-
rial conventions of using size to signal the
different significance of figures is not encouraged
in the Steiner system. Perhaps other drawing
strategies, such as colour use, are taught to fulfil
that purpose instead. This could be the case in
that, during the age period under study, an
emphasis on outlining is deliberately omitted
from the Steiner system, a strategy which largely
determines drawing size and which possibly
resulted in the mainstream children drawing
larger figures overall.
Another possible explanation for mainstream
children producing larger drawings may be due
to the fact that mainstream children are encour-
aged to include details in their work to a much
greater extent than Steiner children. Even though
supplementary analyses (not reported here)
revealed no statistically significant differences
between the two educational groups for detail
use overall, the mainstream children may have
been anticipating the inclusion of more detail than
they actually included, resulting in larger drawings
relative to those from Steiner children. Clearly, a
task-based measure would be needed to assess
this possibility.
As far as the use of colour was concerned, the
correspondence analyses plots revealed that the
Steiner children’s responses were discriminated
from the mainstream group by the colours
chosen for completion of the sad figures. Yellow
discriminated the Steiner children’s drawings
from the mainstream control group, where green,
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
orange and blue were instead associated with the
completion of sad drawings. This unusual asso-
ciation with a light colour for the negative figure
differs from previous findings [38], and may be a
consequence of the difference in educational
background. Children have been shown to asso-
ciate negative emotional qualities with yellow [39]
as well as positive emotional qualities such as
happiness [40], and it may be that as Steiner chil-
dren receive more intensive experience with
colours they were more sensitive to the negative
properties of yellow compared with the main-
stream children.
Overall these findings suggest that different
groups of children may well use different drawing
strategies to represent the emotional characters of
drawn figures. This has implications both for
parents and for professionals who use children’s
drawings to gain insight into the child’s feelings
about figures in their lives. This research chal-
lenges the assumption that art work is produced in
the same way by all children. From this research, it
is evident that children encode emotional informa-
tion through the use of both scaling and colour, yet
the effects which do occur depend, at least in part,
on the type of education they are receiving.
Although the number of Steiner children who
were tested in the present study was compara-
tively small (the size of the Steiner group being
restricted by availability and limited access), the
fact that statistically significant differences never-
theless emerged shows that the effects which
were identified are robust. The findings of this
study therefore show that the type of education
which is received by children can indeed impact
upon the use of size and colour in their drawings
of happy and sad men. This implies that other
potential differences in children’s drawings of
emotionally significant figures ought to be
researched, possibly through longitudinal stud-
ies, to shed further light on how educational
systems, and the personal, domestic and broader
cultural factors thought to influence the impact of
education, can mediate children’s drawing devel-
opment in this area.
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
References 79
1. Thomas, G. V. & Silk, A. M. J. (1990) An Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
Introduction to the Psychology of Children’s and Alyson Davis
Drawings. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
2. For example, Barrett, M. D. & Bridson, A. (1983)
The Effect of Instruction upon Children’s
Drawings, British Journal of Developmental
Psychology, Vol 1, pp. 175–8; Cox, M. V. (1992)
Children’s Drawings. Harmondsworth: Penguin;
(1993) Children’s Drawings of the Human Figure.
Hove: Lawrence Earlbaum; Freeman, N. H. (1977)
How Children Try to Plan Drawings, in Butterworth,
G. [Ed.] (1977), The Child’s Representation of the
World. New York and London: Plenum Press, pp.
3–29; (1995) The Emergence of a Framework
Theory of Pictorial Reasoning, in Lange-Kuttner, C.
[Ed.] Drawing and Looking: Theoretical
Approaches to Pictorial Representation in Children.
Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf,
pp. 135–46.
3. Hammer, E. F. (1958) The Clinical Application
of Projective Drawings. Springfield, IL: C. C.
Thomas; (1997) Advances in Projective Drawing
Interpretation. Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas;
Joiner, T. E., Schmidt, K. L. & Barnett, J. (1996)
Size, Detail, and Line Heaviness in Children’s
Drawings as Correlates of Emotional distress:
(More) Negative Evidence, Journal of Personality
Assessment, Vol. 67, pp. 127–41; Malchiodi, C. A.
(1998) Understanding Children’s Drawings.
London: Jessica Kingsley.
4. For example, McNiff, S. (1992) Art as Medicine:
Creating a Therapy of the Imagination. London:
Piatkus.
5. Joiner, T. E. et al, op. cit.
6. Butler, S., Gross, J. & Hayne, H. (1995) The
Effect of Drawing on Memory Performance in
Opposite:
Young Children, Developmental Psychology,
Figure 1
Vol 31, pp. 597–608; Colour choices for
the sad men drawn
by the mainstream
and Steiner groups
80 Gross, J. & Hayne, H. (1998) Drawing Facilitates
Esther Burkitt, Children’s Verbal Reports of Emotionally Laden
Martyn Barrett
and Alyson Davis Events, Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Applied, Vol 4, pp. 163–79.
7. For example, McNiff, S. op. cit.
8. Machover, K. (1949) Personality Projection in
the Drawings of the Human Figure. Springfield,
IL: C. C. Thomas.
9. Koppitz, E. M. (1966) Emotional Indicators on
Human Figure Drawings of Shy and Aggressive
Children, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol 22,
pp. 466–9; (1968) Psychological Evaluation of
Children’s Human Figure Drawings. London:
Grune and Stratton.
10. Craddick, R. (1961) Size of Santa Claus
Drawings as a Function of Time before and after
Christmas, Journal of Psychological Studies, Vol
12, pp. 121–5; (1963) Size of Hallowe’en Witch
Drawings prior to, on and after Hallowe’en,
Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol 16, pp. 235–8;
Fox, T. & Thomas, G. V. (1990) Children’s
Drawings of an Anxiety-Eliciting Topic: Effect
on Size of the Drawing, British Journal of Clinical
Psychology, Vol 29, pp. 71–81; Jolley, R. P. (1995)
Children’s Production and Perception of Visual
Metaphors for Mood and Emotion in Line
Drawings and in Art. Unpublished doctoral
thesis. University of Birmingham, Birmingham;
Sechrest, L. & Wallace, J. (1964) Figure
Drawings and Naturally Occurring Events:
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 55, pp.
42–4; Thomas, G. V., Chaigne, E. & Fox, T. J.
(1989) Children’s Drawings of Topics Differing
in Significance: Effects on Size of Drawing,
British Journal of Developmental Psychology,
Vol 7, pp. 321–31.
11. Machover, K. op. cit.
12. Cox, M. V. (1993) op. cit; Kellogg, R. (1969)
Analyzing Children’s Art. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
13. Freeman, N. H. (1980) Strategies of
Representation in Young Children: Analysis of
Spatial Skills and Drawing Processes. London:
Academic Press.
14. For example, Cox, M. V. (1992) op. cit; (1993)
op. cit; Thomas, G. V. & Silk, A. M. J. op. cit.
15. For example, Crook, C. (1984) Factors
Influencing the Use of Transparency in
Children’s Drawings, British Journal of
Developmental Psychology, Vol 2, pp. 213–21;
(1985) Knowledge and Appearance, in Freeman,
N. H. & Cox, M. V. [Eds], Visual Order: The Nature
and Development of Pictorial Representation,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 248–64.
16. Pufall, P. B. (1997) Framing a Developmental
Psychology of Art, Human Development, Vol 40,
pp. 169–80.
17. Fox, T. & Thomas, G. V. op. cit.
18. Thomas, G. V. et al, op. cit.
19. Jolley, R. P. op. cit.
20. Burkitt, E., Barrett, M. & Davis, A. (2003a)
The Effect of Affective Characterisations on
the Use of Colour within Children’s Drawings,
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,
Vol 44, pp, 445–55; (2003b) The Effect of Affective
Characterisations on the Size of Children’s
Drawings, British Journal of Developmental
Psychology, Vol 21, pp. 565–84; (2004) The Effect
of Affective Characterisations on the Use of Size
and Colour in Drawings Produced by Children in
the Absence of a Model, Educational Psychology,
Vol 3, No. 24, pp. 315–45.
21. Burkitt, E. et al (2003b) op. cit; (2004) op. cit.
22. Burkitt, E. et al (2003a) op. cit; (2004) op. cit.
23. For example, Jolley, R. P. op. cit; Jolley, R. P.
& Thomas, G. V. (1995) Children’s Sensitivity
to Metaphorical Expression of Mood in Line
Drawings, British Journal of Developmental
Psychology, Vol 13, pp. 335–46.
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
24. For example, Fortes, M. (1940) Children’s
Drawing amongst the Tallensi, Africa, Vol 13, pp.
293–5; (1981) Tallensi Children’s Drawings, in
Lloyd, B. & Gray, J. [Eds] Universals of Human
Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
Iwawaki, S. & Vandewiele, M. (1989) The Human
Being as Drawn by Japanese Pupils Ages 7–12,
Cashiers de Sociologie Economique et Culturelle,
Ethnopsychologie, Vol 12, pp. 119–42; Paget, G. W.
(1932) Some Drawings of Men and Women Made
by Children of Certain non-European Races,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Vol 62, pp. 127–44.
25. Cox, M. V. & Bayraktar, R. (1989) A Cross-
Cultural Study of Children’s Human Figure
Drawings. Poster presented at the Tenth
Biennial Conference of the International Society
for the Study of Behavioural Development,
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, July; Dennis, W.
(1960) The Human Figure Drawings of
Bedouins, Journal of Social Psychology,
Vol 52, pp. 209–19.
26. Dennis, W. op. cit.
27. Court, E. (1989) Drawing on Culture:
The Influence of Culture on Children’s Drawing
Performance in Rural Kenya, Journal of Art and
Design Education, Vol 8, pp. 65–8, Dennis, W.
op. cit; Di Leo, J. H. (1970) Young Children and
Their Drawings. New York: Brunner-Mazel;
Du Bois, C. (1944) The People of Alor: A Social-
Psychological Study of an East Indian Island.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
28. Cox, M. V. (1992) op. cit; Ross, D. D. (1982)
Art for Creative Education: A Basic in
Elementary Curriculum. Childhood Education,
Vol 59, pp. 22–7; Silverman, J., Winner, E.,
Rosenstiel, A. K. & Gardner, H. (1975)
On Training Sensitivity to Painting Styles,
Perception,Vol 4, pp. 373–84; Willats, J. (1977)
How Children Learn to Draw Realistic Pictures,
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,
Vol 29, pp. 367–82.
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
29. Aronsson, K. & Andersson, S. (1996) Social 81
Scaling in Children’s Drawings of Classroom Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
Life: A Cultural Comparative Analysis of and Alyson Davis
Children’s Drawings in Africa and Sweden,
British Journal of Developmental Psychology,
Vol 14, pp. 301–14.
30. Cleeve, H. & Bradbury, R. J. (1992) Children’s
Productions and Judgements of Drawings
of People of Different Importance. Poster
presented at the 5th European Conference
of Developmental Psychology, Seville,
September; Di Leo, J. H. (1973) Children’s
Drawings of Diagnostic Aids. New York:
Brunner-Mazel; Fox, T. & Thomas, G. V. op. cit;
Hulse, W. C. (1952) Childhood Conflict
Expressed through Family Drawings, Journal
of Projective Techniques and Personality
Assessment, Vol 16, pp. 66–79; Thomas, G. V.
et al, op. cit.
31. Steiner, R. (1974) The Kingdom of Childhood.
London: Rudolf Steiner Press.
32. Huchingson, R. & Huchingson, J. (1993)
Waldorf Education as a Program for Gifted
Students, Journal for the Education of the
Gifted, Vol 16, pp. 400–419; Steiner, R. (1950)
The Spiritual Guidance of Man. New York: The
Anthroposophic Press; (1974) op. cit; (1985)
An Introduction to Waldorf Education. London:
Rudolf Steiner Press.
33. Cox, M. V. (1992) op. cit; Congdon, K. G, &
Congdon, D. C. (1989) A Systematic Approach
to Art Education and Mental Health, Visual Arts
Research, Vol 12, pp. 73–9; Jalongo, M. R.
(1990) The Child’s Right to the Expressive Arts,
Childhood Education, Vol 66, pp. 195–201;
Ross, D. D. op. cit; Rostan, S. M. (2000) A Study
of the Emergence of an Artistic and Creative
Identity. Poster presented at the 30th Annual
Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Montreal,
Canada, June.
82 34. Aronsson, K. & Andersson, S. op. cit; Burkitt,
Esther Burkitt, E. et al (2003b) op. cit; (2004) op. cit; Cleeve,
Martyn Barrett
and Alyson Davis H. & Bradbury, R. J. op. cit; Craddick, R. op. cit;
Di Leo, J. H. (1973) op. cit; Fox, T. & Thomas, G. V.
op. cit; Hulse, W. C. op. cit; Thomas, G. V. et al,
op. cit.
35. Craddick, R. A. op. cit; Fox, T. & Thomas, G. V.
op. cit; Hulse, W. C. op. cit; Sechrest, L. &
Wallace, J. op. cit; Thomas, G. V. et al, op. cit.
36. Thomas, G. V. et al, op. cit.
37. Aronsson, K. & Andersson, S. op. cit.
38. Cf. Burkitt, E. et al (2003a) op. cit; (2004) op. cit.
39. Alschuler, R., & Hattwick, L. A. (1943) Easel
Painting as an Index of Personality in pre-School
Children, Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol 13,
pp. 616–25; Hammer, E. F. op. cit.
40. Winston, A. S., Kenyon, B., Stewardson, J.
& Lepine, T. (1995) Children’s Sensitivity to
Expression of Emotion in Drawings, Visual Arts
Research, Vol 21, pp. 1–14.
41. Hammond, S. M. (1988) CORRES 1.0:
A Program for the Correspondence Analysis of
Contingency Tables on IBM Compatible Micros.
Department of Psychology, University of Surrey,
Guildford, Surrey; (1993) The Descriptive
Analyses of Shared Representations, in
Breakwell, G. & Canter, D. [Eds], Empirical
Approaches to Social Representation, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, pp. 205–20.
Appendix 1
Statistical analysis for drawing surface area
A 2 (age group) x 2 (educational group) x 3
(drawing type) three-way mixed ANOVA was
conducted on the surface area scores, with
drawing type entered as the repeated measure,
and independent measures on the other two
factors. A main effect was found for drawing
type (F(2,144)=7.03, p<0.01). This was a
medium sized effect (η2= 0.09) with relatively
high observed power (P = 0.60). Post hoc
(p<0.05) paired t-tests on the means in Table 2
indicated that happy drawings were larger than
both the baseline and sad drawings.
A main effect was also found for educational
group (F(1,72)=16.44, p<0.05). This was a large
effect (η2= 0.67) with high observed power (P =
1.00). The means displayed in Table 2 show that
the mainstream group produced larger drawings
overall than the Steiner group. No additional
main or interaction effects were found.
Appendix 2
Statistical analysis for drawing height
A 2 (age group) x 2 (educational group) x 3
(drawing type) three-way mixed ANOVA was
conducted on the height scores, with drawing
type entered as the repeated measure, and
independent measures on the other two factors.
A main effect was found for drawing type
(F(2,144) = 7.50, p<0.01). The observed power
was high (P = 0.94) and the effect size was
moderate (η2= 0.09). The means are shown in
Table 3. Post hoc paired t-tests (p<0.05) showed
that the happy drawings were significantly taller
than the baseline and sad drawings overall.
However, an interaction effect between drawing
type and age group was also found
(F(2,144)=7.23, p<0.05). The observed power
was high (P = 0.93) and the effect size was
moderate (η2= 0.09). Post hoc paired t-tests
(p<0.05) on the means in Table 3 showed that
only for the youngest group were the happy
drawings significantly taller than the baseline and
sad drawings. Post hoc independent t-tests
(p<0.05) showed that for the baseline and
happy drawings, the youngest age group drew
taller drawings than the oldest age group.
A main effect was also found for educational
group (F(1,72) = 45.15, p<0.01). This effect
was large (η2= 0.36) with high observed power
(P = 1.00). The mainstream group produced taller
drawings overall (M = 18.90, SD = 5.77) than the
Steiner group (M = 11.06, SD = 3.17). No
additional main or interaction effects were found.
JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005
Appendix 3 83
Statistical analysis for drawing width Esther Burkitt,
Martyn Barrett
A 2 (age group) x 2 (educational group) x 3 and Alyson Davis
(drawing type) three-way mixed ANOVA was
conducted on the width scores, with drawing
type entered as the repeated measure, and
independent measures on the other two
factors. A moderate (η2= 0.06) main effect
with high observed power (P = 0.80) was
found for drawing type (F(2,144) = 4.58,
p<0.05). Post hoc paired t-tests (p<0.05)
revealed that the happy drawings (M = 11.59,
SD = 5.17) were significantly wider than the
sad (M = 10.18, SD = 5.41) and baseline
(M = 10.53, SD = 5.14) drawings.

A main effect was also found for educational

group (F(1,44)=18.35, p<0.01). The effect was
large (η2= 0.20) with high observed power
(P = 0.99). Post hoc independent t-tests on the
means indicated that the mainstream group
produced wider drawings (M = 12.43, SD = 4.56)
overall than the Steiner group (M = 8.48,
SD = 3.53).

Appendix 4: Description of analytical

procedure
Correspondence analysis [41] uses well-
established geometric principles to provide
a pictorial representation of the relationship
between categories of response and groups
of individuals. It permits a multi-dimensional
analysis of categorical data by providing a
plot in which the geometric distance between
the groups and the types of response gives
a direct measure of the relative degree of
association between the groups and the
response types. Each drawing type was
then analysed separately by age group
and educational group.

JADE 24.1 ©NSEAD 2005