Investigating the effect of executive functions on young children’s drawing of familiar and novel pictures

Abstract

This study investigates the role of executive functions, specifically inhibitory control (IC) and working memory (WM), in relation to children’s drawing abilities, focusing on young children aged approximately 3.5 to 5.5 years, since their mental development is pivotal to understanding child learning and social behaviour. Tasks employed to measure IC and WM included the Day/Night task, the Grass/Snow task, the Mr. Cucumber test, administered along with specific drawing tasks. The research involved 95 participants who undertook the tasks and tests, administered in two sessions, to assess their cognitive abilities in drawing familiar subjects (human figures) and unfamiliar ones (dogs, rarely drawn by children). The drawings were scored for representational accuracy and for deviation from human figures. Regression and mediation analyses revealed that IC predominantly influenced the drawing of recognizable men, while WM was crucial for drawing non-human-like dogs. The results demonstrate the sensitivity of IC and WM to the familiarity of the drawing task, emphasizing the importance of executive functions in various cognitive abilities of children. The findings provide significant insights into children’s mental development and so have crucial implications for understanding the impact of executive functions on learning and social behaviour in children.