A Review of the Evolution of Research on the Size of Children's Drawings in Relation to Their Expressed Emotion About the Depicted Topic: 1988–2023

Abstract This narrative review examines the relationship between the size of children's drawings and their expressed emotions about the depicted subjects, focusing on research conducted between 1988 and 2023. The studies are presented chronologically to demonstrate how researchers have progressively addressed methodological challenges identified in earlier work. Some of them reached statistically significant results that connected drawing size with expressed emotion, while others did not. They attributed these results mainly to the mechanism of attraction of positive emotions that lead to the enlargement of the drawn objects or repulsion of negative emotions with the opposite effect and secondarily to pictorial conventions. These conflicting results across studies are presented, and interpretations and implications for art education are proposed. The review highlights that professionals such as art educators should take the size parameter into account with particular care, taking into consideration some additional factors such as the expression of emotions by the children themselves.