Question

Four-year-old Hunter draws lines coming down a sheet of construction paper. He then looks at it and decides it's the rain he sees coming down outside his window. This represents which feature of drawing in early childhood?

Answer 1

Hunter's drawing embodying rain he observes outside demonstrates an early childhood cognitive skill called symbolic representation, where drawings or objects represent something else in a child's understanding.

Step-by-step explanation:

Hunter's action of drawing lines on paper and then interpreting them as rain he sees outside represents an early feature of drawing in childhood development known as symbolic representation. This is a cognitive skill where children begin to understand that an object or drawing can stand for something else. In Hunter's case, the lines are not simply marks on paper, but have taken on the meaning of rain, similar to the visual representations that artists create in their work. Through symbolic representation, children express their perceptions of the world around them, as evidenced by Kelly's early artwork based on a window, shadows from a staircase, and a hidden door, where he combined simple forms with concepts of spatial unity and bold use of color. Just as adult artists like Diebenkorn used lines to create interactions within their paintings, children use drawings to interact with their own burgeoning understanding of the world.