The Role of Art in Child Development: Expression, Impact, and Stages

1. Children and Art Zachery Lindsey, Susan Gregory Sara Nasab

2. Definition of Art: • personal definition of art: that which is interesting and meaningful • Here, art is: • Something created by a child with the characteristics of “normal art” (drawing, painting, music, etc.) • What we would consider art, experienced by a child

3. Physiological Impacts • Neurological/mental: • In early stages of life, mind is open to stimulus (images, sounds, language, etc.) • Billions of connections between neurons formed • Art or sound experienced may have profound impact

4. Physiological Impacts • “Mozart Effect” and music • Rauscher and Shaw study • More lasting impacts for children? • Highly developed sense of music and ability

5. Physiological Impacts • Motor Skills and Coordination • Act of producing art • Drawing – hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills • Dancing/play – balance • Object manipulation

6. Psychological Impact • Expression • Child’s inability to use language • Storytelling through art • Vent for imagination • Symbols • First experiences with direct use of symbols • Therapeutic • Autism • Traumatic Experiences

7. Development Timeline • Drawing – easiest to rigorously document and study • Several methods of division • One of these includes five stages: • 1. Scribbling • 2. Preschematic • 3. Schematic • 4. Realistic Stage • 5. Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage

8. Development Timeline • Scribbling Stage • Birth – 2 years old • Imitation of actions • Grip utensil with palm • Awareness of how motion and marks are related • Overlapping or layered marks

9. Development Timeline • Preschematic Stage • 3-5 years • More developed technique; complex, continuous, and connected lines; “conscious creation of form” • Beginning to name objects drawn – critical step • More experimentation with media • Beginning to create drawings to represent real-life objects and add more detail (i.e., a stick person with fingers) • Visual narratives emerge

10. Development Timeline • Schematic Stage • 6-7 years • Child develops routine methods for creating forms, or “schema” that can be altered if necessary • More details • Better concept of space and depth; objects in the background may be smaller; use of ground and sky • More intricate narratives

11. Development Timeline • Realistic Stage • 7-11 years • Child notices inaccuracies, schema break down • Space fully understood; overlapping objects, horizon line • Use of detail not masterered

12. Development Timeline • Realistic Stage (cont.) • Several important occurrences • Loss of spontaneity • Shift away from art as a mode of expression – written word overtakes it • Desire to reproduce forms precisely • Concern of peer/superior evaluation with this reproduction • “Adult art” emerges

13. Development Timeline • Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage • 11+ • Definite end to spontaneity • Strive to make art as natural, exact, and “adult-like” as possible • Shading • Folds • 3-dimensional space • Increased self-criticism of work

14. Development Timeline • Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage (cont) • Continued improvement of skills requires conscious effort • Aware of failures to recreate reality – discouragement • “crisis period”

15. Quotes • Artists feel child art is pure, expressive, and objective: • “I’d like to study the drawing of kids. That’s where the truth is, without a doubt.” • Andre Derain • “The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child and if he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, personal way.” • Henri Matisse • “It took me a whole lifetime to learn to draw like children.” -Pablo Picasso

16. Sources • http://www.icaf.org/resources/papers/children-and-art.html • http://www.learningdesign.com/Portfolio/DrawDev/kiddrawing.html • http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=7923&cn=28 • http://www.socialfiction.org/img/scriblingstage.PNG • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_effect • Making Sense of Children’s Drawings, Angela Anning and Kathy Ring

17. Teenage Biological Development as it Relates to Art

18. Better Artist=Better Potential Mate? • Develop a greater awareness of the opposite sex and the need to appear attractive to them.

19. Risk Takers • Suddenly feel invincible and are subjected to a great deal of social pressures causing them to take risks and act spontaneously.

20. Competing biological systems • Socioemotional and Cognitive-Control networks both developing, but at different rates.

21. Identity Development • The need to define themselves through self expression and involvement in activities which interest them and reflect who they are.

22. Tattoos and piercings • Surviving form of body mutilation; teens often use it as a form of self expression.

23. Adults: Characteristics: experience, independent, self-maintaining

24. Mid-life crisis: miss youth, knows that life is very close to ending Want to leave their mark Finding interests

25. What can I do to help the younger Generations? Mentoring “The wise, older one”

26. When finding interests, sometimes start • an art collection • One of a kind, want to climb the social • ladder • Help out younger artists • Collection represents adult