The relationship between emergent drawing, emergent writing, and visual-motor integration in preschool children

Abstract

Drawing and writing are two major representational systems with many common aspects. Each also has its own system of rules, characterized by different degrees of visual realism and conventionality. The relationship between them at their emergence and the contribution of perceptual and motor skills to their development have been under-investigated, leading to discordant study results. This study investigated the emergence of the ability to draw and write and the association between these two processes in 3- to 5-year-old preschoolers, controlling for the role played by visual-motor integration ability. A total of 115 preschoolers were tested for drawing and writing tasks and visual-motor integration. Variance analysis, correlation analysis, and covariance analysis were performed. The results illustrated a stable association between drawing and writing in the age range considered, which can be traced to their common representational core. Moreover, the weight of visual-motor coordination is differentiated for the two notational systems.