Relations between drawing cubes and copying line diagrams of cubes in 7-to10-year-old children

Previous research has suggested both links and differences between children 's copying of line diagrams and their drawings of solid objects. If the dia gram represents a familiar object, children make more errors than when copy ing a diagram of a nonobject or unfamiliar object, as if they are drawing f rom their representation of the object rather than copying the surface feat ures of the diagram. However, copying a diagram yields fewer and different types of errors than drawing the equivalent solid, which suggests a differe nt process. In Experiment 1 (n = 72), possible relations between copying an d drawing are investigated by asking children to draw a solid cube, then to copy or trace a line diagram of the cube in oblique projection, and finall y to draw the solid again. Copying was better than drawing, and there was p ositive transfer to a subsequent drawing. Tracing was very accurate, but tr ansfer to drawing did not occur, possibly because of the automatic nature o f tracing. In Experiment 2 (n = 120) different groups received versions of the copying task that differed in the extent to which temporal order of lin e copying was structured. Asking children to copy the lines in a systematic order led to improved copies, but this performance did not carry over to a subsequent drawing of the solid. In contrast, when temporal ordering of li ne copying was nor manipulated, there was positive transfer from copying to the subsequent drawing. In Experiment 3 (n = 80), provision of structure t hat emphasized faces by color-groupings of lints or coloring faces led to i mproved copies and did not hinder transfer to drawing the solid. Experiment 4 (n = 90) showed that in a solid drawing task emphasis on faces but not e dges produced a positive effect, both on the immediate drawing and on a sub sequent drawing of a plain cube. We conclude that emphasis on order of line copying improves performance in a copying task because in that case line-t o-line matching is an important element of the skill, whereas this does not aid drawing of the solid object, in which the focus is primarily on repres entation of faces and their interrelations.