From scribbling to drawing: the role of working memory

This article presents a model of scribbling development, proposing that children's working memory capacity development constrains the acquisition of visual control, the development of form, and the attribution of meaning to one's own scribbles. An experiment with 86 participants (18-36 months old) is presented, using free drawing, drawing completion, and human figure drawing tasks, and the Imitation Sorting Task as a measure of working memory. Linear correlation, regression, and cross-classification prediction analyses are reported. The overall pattern of results supports our model, with particularly strong evidence for correlations between working memory capacity and drawing completion measures. An influence of drawing completion tasks on the subsequent human figure drawing was also found.