Reconsidering the scribbling stage of drawing: a new perspective on toddlers' representational processes

Frontiers in Psychology
Claudio LongobardiNathalie O Iotti

Abstract

Although the scribbling stage of drawing has been historically regarded as meaningless and transitional, a sort of prelude to the "actual" drawing phase of childhood, recent studies have begun to re-evaluate this important moment of a child's development and find meaning in what was once considered mere motor activity and nothing more. The present study analyzes scribbling in all its subphases and discovers a clear intention behind young children's gestures. From expressing the dynamic qualities of an object and the child's relationship with it, to gradually reducing itself to a simple contour of a content no more "alive" on the paper, but only in the child's own imagination, we trace the evolution of the line as a tool that toddlers use to communicate feelings and intentions to the world that surrounds them. We will provide a selected number of graphical examples that are representative of our theory. These drawings (13 in total) were extracted from a much wider sample derived from our studies on children's graphical-pictorial abilities, conducted on children aged 0-3 years in various Italian nurseries. Our results appear to indicate that scribbling evolves through a series of stages, and that early graphical activity in child...Continue Reading

References

Apr 1, 1976·Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines·D WoodG Ross
Feb 1, 1990·The British Journal of Clinical Psychology·T J Fox, G V Thomas
Jan 6, 2000·Child Development·T C Callaghan
Jun 1, 1952·Journal of Projective Techniques·M LOWENFELD
Aug 20, 2010·Developmental Psychology·Annie VinterArnaud Witt
Aug 19, 2011·The British Journal of Developmental Psychology·Mirjam EbersbachPaula Asmus
Dec 22, 2011·Perceptual and Motor Skills·Chris Lange-Küttner
Mar 31, 2015·Infant Behavior & Development·Rocco QuagliaLaura E Prino

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Citations

Aug 8, 2018·Frontiers in Neurorobotics·Payam AtoofiJohn Nassour

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