Children's Drawings and Reasons for Anticipating Progressive Changes in Successive Stimuli

Abstract

60 Ss in Grades 1, 3, and 5 attempted to anticipate in drawings the successive pictures of a series and verbalized their reasons for each anticipation. Successful anticipations of critical pictures involved detecting the progressive position change of a figure in earlier pictures of the series and drawing it further along the dimension of change. Presence in the reasons of an active verb predicating change or movement of the figure or a reference to some previous state of the figure were invariably associated with successful anticipations. Successful anticipations increased with age.