Mª Carmen García, Marisol Navas and Isabel Cuadrado
Considering drawing like children’s representation of reality, the main objective of this paper was to test a categorization system (adapted by Gamradt, 1995), to know the features used by a sample of children from Southern Spain to describe two groups with high presence in the area: immigrants and tourists. 673 children (54% boys and 46% girls) from third and fourth grade (Age mean=8.72; SD=0.7) took part in the study. The results show that children attribute distinctive features to both groups. Immigrants are drawn like “men”, “working”, and with some references to their race/ethnic. Tourists are drawn in “beach/sea” or “entertainment/rest situations”, representing both sexes and different ages (children and adults). Our results support the idea that children make use of social categories to classify people in groups and to give meaning to their context. Likewise, we found some indications of validity to drawing’s categorization system.
immigrants, tourists, drawings, children, categorization system.