[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-664819-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":71,"doc-detail-664819-en":121},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":64,"head_meta":66,"extra_data":68,"updated_unix":70},105,"en","drawings-as-a-window-into-developmental-changes-in-object-representations","Drawings as a Window into Developmental Changes in Object Representations","","Children’s representations of object categories shift as they grow older, and these changes can be observed in the drawings they create. The study examines how 3–10-year-olds draw familiar object categories on an iPad, analyzing both semantic content and perceptual similarity to adult drawings. A pre-trained deep convolutional neural network supports a common feature basis for visualizing category organization across ages. Results show older children’s drawings align more with adult organization, especially in later network layers, suggesting increasing convergence with adult perceptual features.",{"@graph":14,"@context":63},[15,34,54],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/drawings-as-a-window-into-developmental-changes-in-object-representations/664819/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":48,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":49,"interactionStatistic":50},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/drawings-as-a-window-into-developmental-changes-in-object-representations/664819.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"LangkahRina","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29",true,{"@type":51,"interactionType":52,"userInteractionCount":4},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":53},"ViewAction",{"@type":55,"mainEntity":56},"FAQPage",[57],{"name":58,"@type":59,"acceptedAnswer":60},"What future direction does the study propose?","Question",{"text":61,"@type":62},"Future work will examine how age-related drawing changes relate to children’s developing perceptual and motor capacities.","Answer","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":65,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":67,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":69,"site_id":7},664819,1793274247,{"code":4,"msg":72,"data":73},"success",[74,78,82,86,91,96,101,105,110,113,117],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":75,"show_sort_weight":76,"slug":77},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":79,"show_sort_weight":80,"slug":81},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":83,"show_sort_weight":84,"slug":85},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":87,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":88,"show_sort_weight":89,"slug":90},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":92,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":97,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":102,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},8,30,"research-report",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":108,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":112},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":114,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":115,"show_sort_weight":114,"slug":116},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":118,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":119,"show_sort_weight":87,"slug":120},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":72,"data":122},{"doc_id":69,"user_id":123,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":124,"doc_module":4,"category_id":102,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":125,"file_id":126,"file_url":127,"file_type":128,"file_size":129,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":92,"language":130,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":131,"faqs":132,"seo_title":133,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":70,"read_time":134},962090893776,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","Drawings as a window into developmental changes in object representations  \nBria Long  \n[bria@stanford.edu](bria@stanford.edu)[ ](bria@stanford.edu)Department of Psychology Stanford University  \nJudith E. Fan  \n[jefan@stanford.edu](jefan@stanford.edu)[ ](jefan@stanford.edu)Department of Psychology Stanford University  \nMichael C. Frank  \n[mcfrank@stanford.edu](mcfrank@stanford.edu)[ ](mcfrank@stanford.edu)Department of Psychology Stanford University  \nAbstract  \nHow do children's representations of object categories change as they grow older? As they learn about the world around them, they also express what they know in the drawings they make. Here, we examine drawings as a window into how children represent familiar object categories, and how this changes across childhood. We asked children (age 3-10 years) to draw familiar object categories on an iPad. First, we analyzed their semantic content, finding large and consistent gains in how well children could produce drawings that are recognizable to adults. Second, we quantified their perceptual similarity to adult drawings using a pre-trained deep convolutional neural network, allowing us to visualize the representational layout of object categories across age groups using a common feature basis. We found that the organization of object categories in older children's drawings were more similar to that of adults than younger children's drawings. This correspondence was strong in the final layers of the neural network, showing that older children's drawings tend to capture the perceptual features critical for adult recognition. We hypothesize that this improvement reflects increasing convergence between children's representations of object categories and that of adults; future work will examine how these age-related changes relate to children's developing perceptual and motor capacities. Broadly, these findings point to drawing as a rich source of insight into how children represent object concepts. Keywords: object representations; drawings; child development  \nIntroduction  \nAs humans, we have many powerful tools to externalize what we know, including language and gesture. One tool that has been transformative for human cognition and culture is graphical representation, which allows people to encode their thoughts in a visible, durable format. Drawing is an important case study in graphical representation, being a technique that dates back 60,000 years (Hoffmann et al., 2018), well before the emergence of symbolic writing systems, and is practiced in many cultures.  \nIn modern times, drawings are produced prolifically by children from an early age, providing a rich source of potential insight into their emerging understanding of the visual world. For example, as children learn the diagnostic properties of objects they encounter, they might express this knowledge in the drawings they make. How can we leverage this natural behavior to understand how they learn abstractions over their perceptual experience, such as object categories?  \nOn the one hand, children quickly form sophisticated perceptual representations of familiar objects, leveraging shape information in conjunction with linguistic cues (Smith, Jones, Landau, Gershkoff-Stowe, & Samuelson, 2002) . Typically, such learning is measured using discrete choices between stimuli that vary along dimensions chosen by an experimenter. By contrast, drawing tasks both permit children to  \ninclude any information they consider relevant and can provide rich, high-dimensional information about the content and structure of children's perceptual representations. For example, when presented with a target object to draw in which a prominent feature is occluded (e.g., the handle of a mug is turned away), children as young as 5 years of age frequently include the occluded object part in their drawing anyway, displaying the robustness of their internal representation to variation in viewpoint (Davis, 1983) .  \nOn the other hand, important develop","cbCaimYJW0NaAsWF","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimYJW0NaAsWF","pdf",891761,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Graphical representation as a tool for cognition\n## Learning and measuring object representations\n## Developmental changes in perceptual processing\n## Quantitative methods for analyzing drawings","[{\"question\":\"What future direction does the study propose?\",\"answer\":\"Future work will examine how age-related drawing changes relate to children’s developing perceptual and motor capacities.\"}]","Drawings as a Window into Developmental Changes in Object Representations | PDF",15]