Cognitive tempo and children's human figure drawings.

Abstract

Recent research ( 2 ) has shown a relationship between conceptual impulsivity and children's visual-motor integration ability as measured by the Bender-Gestalt test. Impulsive children displayed significantly more errors in figure reproductons than did reflective children. The present study was designed to investigate further the role of impulsivity-reflectivity in children's drawings. Ninety-one kindergarten children were administered the Marching Familiar Figures test and the Human Figure Drawing. The subjects were divided into two extreme groups of impulsive and reflective scorers. The Former included 28 subjects who fell above the median of 23 errors and below the median of 85 sec. of response time on the matching test for their age group. The latter were 28 subjects who fell below the median on errors and above the median on response time for their age group. In scoring their drawings Koppitz's ( 3 ) Developmental Scoring System, Emotional Indicators for ages 5 to 1 2 yr. and a more specific scoring system comprised of those signs thought to be indicators of impulsivity (poor integration of parts, shading of neck. figure slanting. transparencies, tiny head, monster or grotesque figure, and omission of neck) were employed. Biserial correlations for total indicants as well as individual chi squared analyses for each indicant were computed. All correlations were low (TI,,. .05). These find~ngs suggest that the human figure drawings may be a useful general screening tool since draw~ng does not seem to be biased against cognitively impulsive children as other tests have been shown to be (1, 2 ) .