When depicting emotions, children have been shown to alter the content of their drawings (e.g., number and types of expressive cues) depending on the characteristics of the audience (i.e., age, familiarity, and authority). However, no study has yet investigated the influence of the audience gender on children’s depiction of emotions in their drawings. This study examined whether drawing for a male versus for a female audience have an impact on the number and type of emotional information children use to depict sadness, anger, and fear. Children aged 7 (N = 92) and 9 (N = 126) were asked to draw a figure and then to produce three drawings of a person, to depict three emotions (sadness, anger, fear). Children were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions: they were instructed either to draw with no explicit mention of an audience (control condition) or to draw so that the depicted emotion would be recognized by a male (male audience condition) or by a female (female audience condition). A content analysis was conducted on children’s drawings, revealing the use of seven types of graphic cues for each emotion. We found numerous differences between the three conditions relative to the type of cues used by children to depict emotions, particularly for anger and fear and particularly at the age of 7. Overall, children used facial cues more frequently for a female audience and contextual cues more frequently for a male audience. These results are discussed in terms of their implications in clinical, educational, and therapeutic settings.

在描绘情绪时，儿童已被证明会根据观众的特征（即年龄、熟悉程度和权威）改变他们绘画的内容（例如，表达线索的数量和类型）。然而，还没有研究调查观众性别对儿童在绘画中描绘情绪的影响。这项研究检验了男性与女性观众的绘画是否会影响儿童用来描绘悲伤、愤怒和恐惧的情绪信息的数量和类型。7 ( N = 92) 和 9 ( N= 126) 被要求画一个人物，然后制作三个人的图画，描绘三种情绪（悲伤、愤怒、恐惧）。孩子们被随机分配到三个条件之一：他们被指示在没有明确提及观众的情况下进行绘画（控制条件），或者进行绘画以便男性（男性观众条件）或女性（女性观众条件）。对儿童绘画进行了内容分析，揭示了每种情绪使用了七种类型的图形提示。我们发现这三种情况在儿童用来描绘情绪的线索类型方面存在许多差异，特别是愤怒和恐惧，尤其是在 7 岁时。总体而言，对于女性观众，儿童更频繁地使用面部线索，而男性观众则更频繁地使用上下文线索。这些结果将根据它们在临床、教育和治疗环境中的意义进行讨论。