Mental representation plays a crucial role in shaping attitudes and behaviour. Children's representations of ‘nature’ can be assessed across various dimensions, encompassing aspects like the level of wildness, cognitive complexity, degree of elaboration, emotional expression and representational style. However, comprehending children's natural representations, particularly among preadolescents with limited verbal narrative abilities, remains a challenge. 

In a study published in People and Nature, Prof. CHEN Jin and his team of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) studied the multidimensional psychological representations of Chinese adolescents towards natural environment, and explored how they understand and express information related to natural environment through drawing and writing. 

Employing a draw-and-write task and a questionnaire survey, the researchers let preadolescent children (aged 9–12) draw their cognition of the natural environment on paper and write down the ideas and feelings related to it. Specifically, they examined the impacts of direct, indirect and vicarious nature experiences on the natural representations of preadolescent children in China. 

They firstly found that children's drawings of nature not only share similarities but also display significant variations.Their drawings depict a wide range of living and non-living elements, sometimes including humans. The natural representation of children also exhibited significant variations in terms of the level of wildness, cognitive complexity, degree of elaboration, expression of emotion and representation style. 

They then found that vicarious nature experiences have a significant positive impact on the cognitive complexity, extent of elaboration and positive emotional expression in children's drawings, while direct nature experiences also have a weaker but still significant positive effect on the elaboration.  

The findings highlighted the significance of the surrounding environment and nature experiences, especially vicarious nature experience, in shaping the natural representations of preadolescents. 

"Our study suggests that the draw-and-write mapping method is a reliable and effective way to capture children's natural representations. Chinese adolescents could express their cognitions and emotions about the natural environment clearly trough drawing and writing,” said CHEN Jin of XTBG. 

Contact 

CHEN Jin Ph.D Principal Investigator 

Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
E-mail: cj@xtbg.org.cn
First published: 19 December 2023 

Sample of drawings. (Image by YUE Zhihui)