From Mind to Picture: A Systematic Review on Children’s and Adolescents’ Understanding of the Link between Artists and Pictures

Pictorial symbols have multiple layers of meaning: not only do they represent objects, events and ideas about the world, they also represent the intentions of artists as well as other artist attributes (age, skill, originality and knowledge, mood, style and sentience). Although children’s developmental milestones of pictorial understanding have been the subject of a long-standing debate, their understanding of the relation between artists and pictures has often been neglected. The aim of this article was to conduct a systematic review on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of the relation between artists and pictures. PsycINFO and Web of Science databases were searched for English, Spanish, German, and Italian language empirical studies that examined this link in 2- to 18-year- olds. Forty-two citations (64 studies) from 14 different countries met the inclusion criteria. Results revealed the majority of the studies focused on the understanding of the artist’s intention. Although research on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of other attributes is scarce, and there were inconsistencies across the methodologies used, it seems that they first acknowledge intention and only later become more aware of how artist’s attributes are communicated through intention. The results of the review encourage subsequent research to provide a clearer conceptualised model of child and adolescent understanding of the artist-picture relationship. Such a model should be placed within a wider framework of the network of relationship between the artist, picture, world and beholder. Finally, consideration of how the development of understanding the artist-picture relationship is bi-directionally influenced with other developmental milestones in the child psychology is encouraged, particularly picture-production and theory of mind, and variations in atypical populations.