When drawing human figures, children often
make the head too large for the rest of the
body. A recent study offers some insight into
this common (1) in children's illustrations. As
part of the study, researchers asked children
between four and seven years old to make
several ( 2) of adults. When they drew frontal
views of these (3), the size of the heads
was markedly enlarged. However, when the
children drew rear views of the adults, the
size of the heads was not nearly so
exaggerated. The researchers suggest that
children draw bigger heads when they know
they must leave ( 4) for facial details.
Therefore, the distorted head size in
children's illustrations is a form of planning
ahead and not an indication of a poor sense
of (5 ).
