Drawings by Children Reveal Their Transformative Experience

If you ever wondered what your child’s drawings might reveal, keep on reading. These drawings might tell you a thing or two about transformative experiences.

Imagine standing on top of El Capitan looking out over the world underneath you. Or at its foot looking at the majestic mountain that rises well above you. Imagine being underwater at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, experiencing the vibrant underwater ecosystem. You feel immersed in the massive ocean around you, seeing the surface of the water high above you. These feelings of awe and wonder may have been transformative experiences that had a major impact on you. They can be caused by experiencing the wonders of nature or the magic of art and music, or by religious experiences.

The Overview Effect

There is one transformative experience only a select few have been privy to—a breathtaking experience only a few hundred people have ever reported. That feeling of awe is called the Overview Effect. It is the feeling most astronauts report when they return to Earth, described as a transformative experience that alters their perspective of our planet and humanity—an experience that fosters a sense of unity, interconnectedness, and responsibility for the planet's well-being. The Overview Effect is a feeling of looking down at the blue marble that we call planet Earth and realizing it is all we have—an understanding that we are only a tiny dot in the vastness of space.

Recently, some 40,000 children have joined this select group of astronauts. They, too, have experienced watching planet Earth from space. As part of an education program, they were launched into space (in virtual reality [VR]), after a pre-flight program. In this program, they wrote an application letter to become an astronaut, hung upside down on a balance beam to experience gravity, and made puzzles with oven mitts, like real astronauts solving complex problems. Once they pass the astronaut training, a custom-built rocket ship arrives in front of their school and they take a seat in hydraulic chairs. They put their VR glasses on, and, guided by an actual astronaut, they are launched into space.

Inside the SpaceBuzz rocketship

Source: SpaceBuzz, used with permission

They enter an orbit around the Earth and are told about the Amazon rainforest, fish in the ocean, the Northern Lights, and the fact that from space there are no national borders. Once they return to Earth from the VR journey, they have the opportunity to give press conferences to friends and family about their experience, just like real astronauts do. This educational program driven by European Space Agency astronaut André Kuipers and the nonprofit organization SpaceBuzz has now reached most countries in Europe and has already visited the United States.

SpaceBuzz rocketship in Washington, DC

Source: SpaceBuzz, used with permission

Using Questionnaires

So how do we know that people—adults and children—experience the Overview Effect? We can ask astronauts and report their observations, but as researchers, we should also consider other more objective measures. One way to measure whether people experience the feeling of awe and wonder is by asking them to fill out questionnaires. One could ask respondents to fill out questionnaires after having been exposed to the transformational experience, or even better, ask them before and after to map out whether the experience has increased the feeling of awe and wonder.

Questionnaires are frequently used in psychological research, but they are a bit cumbersome, particularly if you ask people to fill them out twice. And even more particularly, children typically are not fond of filling out questionnaires. Is there an alternative to measure transformative experiences? It turns out there is.

Drawing

A clever research method asks people to draw an image of themselves. In one study, participants were asked to draw an image of themselves before they were exposed to a 5-minute video clip that showed some natural wonders that would likely trigger the feeling of awe and wonder. After having seen that video clip, participants were again asked to draw a picture of themselves. When participants were part of the transformational experience, they drew a smaller self. Apparently, going through the experience of awe and wonder makes one feel smaller, with a smaller drawing as the result.

In a recently published study, we tried out this new method. We asked 100 11-year-olds to draw a picture of themselves before they took the VR journey into space in the custom-built rocket ship. After they returned to Earth safely, we asked them to draw a picture again. We then carefully measured the size of the person these children had drawn and computed the difference in size before and after experiencing the Overview Effect. We found no difference in size.

One might conclude that the VR journey did not trigger the Overview Effect—that children simply did not go through the feeling of awe and wonder. This was not quite the impression they gave when they left the custom-built rocket ship, but science prevails. However, in earlier work, we had demonstrated that the VR journey did trigger the Overview Effect. We had asked children to fill out an Overview Effect questionnaire and an awe questionnaire—both before and after the space journey—and it was clear that children did experience what the VR experience was supposed to trigger: a feeling of awe and wonder.

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We went back to the metaphorical drawing table. Were drawings by children simply not a good way to measure the Overview Effect? Did what worked for adults simply not work for children? We asked a group of independent raters to help us. It turned out that children’s drawings were very insightful with regard to measuring the Overview Effect. But the size of the drawings did not matter; the amount of detail did. When children were asked to draw before their space journey, they made rather simple drawings. When they were asked to make another drawing afterward, they did not simplify the drawing, but instead added far more detail to it. The difference is details in drawings were indicative of what children had learned during the VR journey.

I am not quite proposing that we abandon tests in schools and replace them with asking children to draw. But when it comes to transformational experiences, I would recommend paying more attention to detail in children’s drawings.