Children's developing ability to depict emotions in their drawings

Abstract

55 children aged 5 to 9 years were asked to draw pictures depicting happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, and fear as well as pictures that did not express any emotion. These pictures were then scored by nonexpert adults for their overall emotional expressiveness, that is, how well they depicted the intended emotion. The results showed that drawings were generally regarded by adults as emotionally expressive. Happiness was the emotion most easily recognized in children's drawings, closely followed by sadness. The results also showed a linear increase in ratings of emotional expressiveness with age.