Generic Representations in Children’s Drawings

To investigate drawing development, kindergarten (N = 213; age range 2;0–3;9and Grade 1 (N = 183; age range 6;11–8;9) children performed Moore’s (1986) colouring task. It was found that young children’s drawings of a cube represent generalizations rather than particular models. An intermediate stage of differentiation between scribbles and representational drawings, closed forms, was identified. It was discovered that very young children often do not co-ordinate outline drawings with colouring. Outline drawing stage was correlated with colour use and co-ordination of colouring. Seven categories of ways how children colour in the single square that was drawn to represent the model cube were