Does task context affect copying? Visual analysis and graphic quality in 3- and 4-year-olds

At the age when the first controlled shape productions appear, what are the visual analysis capacities of children? Learning to draw letters or copy drawings requires a fine visual analysis of the model to reproduce all the shapes that compose it. This article focused on the relationship between visual analysis (number of gazes at the model) or associated copy production (conformity to the model) in 3- and 4-year-old children in different production contexts. 53 children had to copy simple shapes (single shape copy task) and complex shapes (mixed shape copy task) in 3 contexts: graphic (producing a circle), drawing (completing a fish drawing with a bubble) or writing (completing a word with the letter “O”). Results showed that the number of gazes and the quality of copying in 3–4-year-old children depend both on model complexity and on the context in which the child must produce the target form. The results of this study highlight the role of representation and visual-graphic constraints in the copying task.