Children's Construction of the Human Figure

Abstract

Is there evidence for “syncretism” or “juxtaposition of parts” in the development of children's ability to represent the human image graphically? Syncretism refers to an inability to organize the parts of the human image into a structurally coherent figure despite knowledge of the representational meaning of those parts and sufficient motor skill to perform the task. This study agrees with Golomb's criticism of earlier work for inferring the occurrence of syncretism on the basis of inadequacies in children's drawings but questions the sufficiency of the evidence used by Golomb for denying that syncretism occurs. To obtain evidence of a more definitive kind, a procedure involving manikin assembly was devised that would permit independent assessment of a child's understanding of the representational significance of the manikin parts and a child's ability to assemble those parts into a plausible figure. Research using this procedure, conducted with 142 children across the age range of 2 to 4 yr., yielded no syncretism; knowledge of the meaning of the parts was a sufficient condition for successful figural assembly.