Drawing as a mediator of social interactions among children

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the occurrence of social interactions among children of different ages during four drawing situations (with crayons or gouache, individually and in group). Twenty-eight boys and girls from a daycare in São Carlos-SP, Brazil, between two to five years of age, participated in the study and were divided in four groups according to age. A total of four hours of video recording were transcribed. Identified interactions were classified according to a system of categories. The main results indicate the occurrence of 728 interactions, with higher frequency among 4-year-old children and lower frequency among 2-year-old; more interactions occurred in the majority of groups in the gouache/group condition and a lower frequency of interaction occurred in the crayons/individually condition; the interactive categories that stood out the most were Description and Imitation and Plot was the least frequent category. This study evidenced that drawing promotes a variety of social interactions among children.