Symmetrical Motifs in Young Children’s Drawings: A Study on Their Representations of Plant Life

Abstract

Young children love drawing; this is without question. Besides that, drawings are also of interest to scholars and educators, since they seem to provide food for thought regarding children's conceptual development during their early education. Different approaches are taken when it comes to analysing children's drawings but insufficient attention has been given to the issue of the spontaneous depictions of symmetrical motifs in young children's drawings. This pictorial phenomena might not go unnoticed by parents and teachers but the fact is that the scientific community has no reliable data regarding how children under 8 naturally draw symmetrical patterns to express themselves graphically. Accordingly, the present study analyses 116 drawings undertaken by children between 4 and 7 on a well-known natural issue in early childhood such as plant life. Pictorial motifs displaying both cyclic and dihedral symmetries were found in the pictorial sample under examination and the data gathered is put in perspective with the gender and educational level variables. The results of the study show that symmetry, particularly, dihedral symmetry, is a very common pictorial practice in the sample and, also, that the occurrence of symmetrical motifs displays a relationship with the independent variables considered in the study.