The effects of dialogue between a teacher and students on the representation of partial occlusion in drawings by Chinese children

In the last two decades, a series of studies have investigated children's competence in depicting the spatial relations among three-dimensional objects represented on a two-dimensional surface. Children's social and cultural contexts strongly shape their cognitive capacity in relation to drawing. The drawings of children from six to seven years of age were analyzed in this study. One hundred twenty first grade children were randomly assigned to three groups: Treatment 1, Treatment 2, and Treatment 3. Treatment 1 was the control group. The experimental group was divided into two treatments: Treatment 2 and Treatment 3. Forty children participated in each treatment group. The children in Treatment 1 were given only verbal cues about a game of "robber and policeman," in which they were told to draw without being given any visual objects as models or further dialogue. The children in Treatment 2 were given verbal cues with social interaction (dialogue) about spatial relationships which were of the figures and environment of the game, "robber and policeman." The children in Treatment 3 were given verbal cues and were exposed to actual visual props that depicted the spatial relationships in addition to being engaged in a dialogue about the spatial arrangements of the objects. This study examined the effects of the use of visual objects and dialogue between teacher and students on the representation of partial occlusion in children's drawings. The results of this study demonstrated that the drawings made by children in Treatment 3 were significantly different from those of Treatment 1 and Treatment 2. The Treatment 3 children, who were asked to engage in dialogue about spatial relationships among visual objects in several hiding conditions, appeared to be supported with more in depth cues and directions. Thus, they depicted occlusion in drawings better than the children in Treatment 1 and 2.