Representations of internal body image: a study of pre-adolescent and adolescent students in Araucaria, Paranà, Brazil

Within a wider theoretical frame, concerned with the construction of biological knowledge during infancy and adolescence ( Piaget, 1926; Munari and al. 1976 ), in previous researches, we have been providing a descriptive characterization of the developmental patterns through which graphic representation of the inside of the body progresses, from childhood to adolescence, and we have been outlining progressive levels of organization of interior body image. Ethno-anthropological literature and research contain numerous examples of non-occidental cultures’ mythologies, belief systems and local medical knowledge about the body. Comparative studies on the representation of the body interior by subjects of non occidental cultures appeared therefore to be of particular interest. The purpose of the present study was to compare graphic representations of the inside of the body of a sample of pre-adolescent and adolescent students living in a rural area of Brazil ( n = 143) using the same methodology and scoring system that was used in previous studies by Amann Gainotti on Italian subjects ( (Amann Gainotti, 1988,1989,1990,1992, 2004 ). Results obtained on brasilian subjects show the same difficulties to draw the human body and it’s internal structure that were found in others populations of children and adolescents. Few subjects represented overall complete organ systems , when they did it was particularly the digestive and the respiratory system. Besides very few students depicted sex organs -