Children's Drawings of the Self as an Expression of Cultural Conceptions of the Self

Abstract

The present study is based on the assumption that the figure size of young children's drawings of themselves is mediated by cultural conceptions of the self. It was hypothesized that Cameroonian rural children, developing predominantly an interdependent self-conception, draw themselves alone and in a family picture smaller than urban German children, who predominantly develop an independent self-conception. A total of 570 preschool children were recruited from Cameroonian Nso-farmer families and German middle-class families. Drawings of 76 Cameroonian and 72 German children, matched for age, graphical competence, developmental stage, and structural level of human figure drawing (tadpoles, transitional drawings, and conventional human figure drawings), were entered into final analyses. According to our hypothesis, the figure size as well as the head size of Cameroonian children's drawings are substantially smaller compared to the drawings of German children. Results are discussed in regard to the cognitive size of the self, which is mediated differently by different cultural contexts.