Children’s Self-Image Represented Through Drawn Portrayals

The concept of body perception spans across various cognitive processes, all of which are integral to understanding the way we fit into our world. For children, this is a skill that must rapidly develop alongside their similarly rapid physical growth (Neves et al., 2017; Truby & Paxon, 2002). Creativity - a means of expression for people across the spectrum of age - is also important to a child’s view of the world and their expression of such view, as complex (and especially abstract) language might not yet be mastered (Farokhi & Hashemi, 2011). Through the analysis of children’s self-portraits and measured body distortion, this study seeks to investigate how preschool children’s perception of their body size is represented through their self-portraits. This research goal is achieved by comparing the quantified level of detail in participants’ (4- to 5-year-old children; from preschools in rural New Hampshire) self-portraits to a measured ratio of body image distortion. An overall significant negative correlation was shown between the level of drawing detail and body image distortion (r = -.498, p = .007). This relationship between measures has the potential to create a method of monitoring children’s internal mental state as it relates to body image in an easy and unintrusive way.