Young Children's Cognitive Development About The Painter's Intention And Its Educational Implications

With the coming of so called "picture reading" era, studies on how children understand pictures are becoming more and more important. Knowing the developmental characteristics of preschool children's cognition about the painter's intention will provide us an all-around and in-depth understanding of the development of children's aesthetic psychology, which helps to guide the art education practice in kindergarten more effectively. Further, the findings of this study will enrich the developmental researches on children's understanding of intention.Based on former researches, the present study had designed three experiments to systematically examine preschool children's cognition development about the painter's intention, all the Participants were randomly selected from two ordinary kindergartens in Shanghai.First, children's awareness of the fact that a drawing can reflect the painter's intention, Or, at which age can children realize that a drawing expresses the painter's intention.Second, children's cognition of the relationship between the painter's intention and his drawing. That is, whether and how a child can use the painter's intention to interpret the drawing when reading a picture.Third, different viewers can have different understanding of the painter'sintention--young children's cognition. In other words, when children can realizethat different viewers can have different understanding of the painter's intention.The results showed that:(1)3 years old children can realize that a drawing reflects the painter's intention.(2) In the face of an ambiguous drawing with life situation, most 3 years old children can eliminate their own thought and use the painter's intention to interpret this drawing.(3) When reached age 4, children begin to interpret the picture which offered incomplete visual information by referring to the author's intention, no longer totally rely on subjective speculation.(4) In the face of an ambiguous drawing, if the children's perception of the drawing is different from the painter's intention, most 3-6 years old children can't eliminate the lead of their own perception and refer to the painter's intention to interpret the drawing.(5) When the author's intention is embodied in the drawing content, most 4 years old children can realize that different viewers may have different understanding of the painter's intention.(6) When the author's intention is embodied in the drawing implication, most children can't realize that different viewers would have different understanding of the painter's intention until 6 years old. This is related to the children's interpretive theory of mind.(7) With the growth of age, children's ability of understanding the painter's intention is showing a trend of gradual increase.(8) Children's ability of understanding the painter's intention is no gender difference.According to the study, suggestions on designing arts appreciation activities in kindergarten as well as the effective ways to enhance children's ability to understand intention during art appreciation activities have been advanced at the end of the thesis.