4: Empirical foundation

This processual study was based on parallel video recordings of drawing and painting children of preschool age (recording A = drawing child, recording B = emerging picture), supervised by adults, but without any predefined setting of a task.

In the first stage we worked on an extensive body of such recordings, documenting over 650 picture processes by over 50 children from Switzerland. In an examination of this body of work, we selected those recordings that facilitate clear interpretations due to their film quality and the documented process and for which protection of privacy proved to be unproblematic. This selection, comprising 184 recordings of 43 children with ages ranging from 1 year 5 months to 5 years 4 months (marginal difference in the distribution by gender), forms the actual basis of the examination of morphological assessments using the early graphic process.