THE ROLE OF STRATEGIC VISUAL-ATTENTION IN CHILDRENS DRAWING DEVELOPMENT

The many variables that affect the production of visually realistic dr awings in children (such as instructions and contrasting models), have been widely documented in the research literature. The experiments re ported here assess one variable that has been largely ignored, namely the attention that the child pays towards the drawing model. First, it was shown that the progression from intellectual to visual realism oc curred between six and eight years of age, and was accompanied by a sp ontaneous increase in attention towards the drawing models. A second e xperiment showed that the drawing performance of the 6-year-olds was e nhanced by contrasting tasks and explicit instructions. At all ages, e xplicit instructions increased attention towards the model, and the us e of an efficient attentional strategy was associated with visually re alistic drawings. These studies provide further evidence that intellec tual and visual realism are not distinct developmental stages, but may instead reflect the use of different attentional strategies by childr en. (C) 1998 Academic Press.