Emotional and developmental aspects of human figure drawings in predicting school readiness

Abstract

It was hypothesized that the combined use of Koppitz' developmental and emotional scores can improve the prediction of school readiness from children's Human Figure Drawings (HFD) when compared with each measure separately. The relationship of SES to HFD scores was also investigated. Multiple regression analysis was used with four factors—developmental score, emotional score, sex of the child, and SES of the school— to derive comparative correlations to test the hypotheses and to create a prediction equation to estimate the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) scores of 141 kindergarten students ages 5 to 6 years representing three SES levels. Hit rate data were also presented. The results showed that the correlation for the combined developmental and emotional scores with the MRT score was not different than their separate correlations with the MRT. The SES factor was found to be significantly correlated ( p < .01) with both developmental and emotional scores. The best single variable predictor of MRT scores was SES. The application of Bayes' Theorem of probability to the hit rate data showed that the nonreadiness predictions yielded by the developmental score, emotional score, and their combination are not better than chance predictions. Thus, it was found that Koppitz' developmental or emotional scoring systems are not viable screening instruments.