Children's drawings of emotional faces

In their drawings of facial expressions, children show a preference for the mouth and some other representative indicators over the eyebrows to reflec t emotion in faces. The present study aimed to understand the preference fo r mouth and the exclusion of eyebrows in children's facial drawings. In ord er to test the three alternative explanations-greater demand to comprehend the eyebrows, relative saliency of the mouth/the eyebrows according to emot ion and difficulty in drawing with eyebrows as oblique lines-drawing-comple tion, select ion-construction and copying tasks were designed respectively. Four- 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children performed on happy, sad, angry and s urprised emotions. Results revealed that children's mouth performance was b etter than the eyebrow performance in copying and drawing tasks, but not in the selection construction task. Eyebrow selections were more successful t han mouth selections on angry. Children's copying and select ion-constructi on performance improved with age but interacted with emotion and feature. C hildren drew the mouths more successfully than the eyebrows on all emotions (except happy) and at all ages. Children's mouth preference and eyebrow ex clusion in their emotional facial drawings were related not only to their d rawing inability with oblique lines and not paying attention to the details but also to their inability to capture the expressive aspect of line drawi ngs.