IDENTIFIERS

This report presents a methodology for examining perceptual development in the arts and describes a study-based on this methodology. The purpose of the study was to chart the developmental course of perceptual skills used in the arts and to investigate whether these skills generalize across,art forms and aesthetic properties or whether they are specific,to the art form and/or property to which they apply. The sensitivity of 7-, 9-, and 12-year-old children to the aesthetic properties of repleteness, expression, and composition was investigated in the art forms of drawing, music, and literature. The stylistic properties manipulated in sensitivity tasks were, in drawing, thickness and texture of line; in music, articulation, timbre, and dynamics; in literature, meter, rhyme, and similes. Sensitivity to aesthetic properties was shown to develop between 7 and 9 years of age. Ability to perceive aestheti