CHILDREN DRAWING OF WATER-LEVEL - OPERATORY KNOWLEDGE, ATTENTION TO VISUAL IMAGE, AND DEPICTION SKILLS

Young children do not generally depict the view-specific appearance of objects, even when they draw from a visible model. Does this mean tha t they do not have access to the visual projection of objects, or that they just tend to refer to their internal models of objects? To obtai n independent measures of subjects' visual apprehension and internal m odel of an object, 5-, 7- and 9-year-olds were required to draw the wa ter level in a tilted bottle under three viewing conditions: a) the bo ttle is seen through a da Vinci window (vertical glass pane), subjects trace the visual image of the bottle directly on the window; b) the b ottle is hidden in a bag, they draw the water level as they imagine it to be; c) the bottle is viewed normallY, they draw the water level on paper. It was found that five-year-olds draw the water level horizont al on the glass pane but not in the other conditions. This shows young children do have access to the model's visual image but that in norma l drawing situations they refer to their knowledge Of the model rather than to its appearance. By nine years of age children draw horizontal levels without the help Of the glass pane.They are able to focus on t he model's visual presentation without a facilitating device, evidenci ng their ability to differentiate between an object's intrinsic proper ties and its view-specific appearance.