Notes widespread use of human figure drawings to describe and predict psychological functioning. Reviews data-based studies on figure drawings and concludes that there is little support for their validity or for their use as devices to assess personality, behavior, emotion, or intellectual functioning. Presents ease of administration and anecdotal…

Responds to previous article (Motta, Little, and Tobin, this issue) which reviewed data-based studies on figure drawings and found little support for their validity or use in assessing personality, behavior, emotion, or intellectual functioning. Notes recent approaches to interpretation of human figure drawings and cites flaws in argument against…

Responds to article (Motta, Little, and Tobin, this issue) which reviewed data-based studies on figure drawings and found little support for their validity or use in assessing personality, behavior, emotion, or intellectual functioning. Agrees with original article, suggesting that arguments be couched in terms of three basic concepts: illusory…

Responds positively to previous article (Motta, Little, and Tobin, this issue) which reviewed data-based studies on figure drawings and found little support for their validity or use. Focuses on human figure drawing as personality assessment tool, reviewing its empirical research, identifying only ways that it can be used, and suggesting most…

Responds to reviewers of authors' previous article (Motta, Little, and Tobin, this issue) which reviewed data-based studies on figure drawings and found little support for their validity or use in assessing personality, behavior, emotion, or intellectual functioning. Defends position of original article and addresses issues raised by reviewers.…

Investigated relationship between anger and anger imagery and between anger and positive action. College students (n=46) completed social action questionnaire, drawing representing anger, and Spielberger's State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory. Found significant positive correlation between intensity of anger imagery and State Anger, and…

Two experiments examined children's ability to use lengths of lines on a page to show orientations of object surfaces. Found that five- and six-year olds are more reluctant to depart from actual object proportions than seven- and eight-year olds, but children in both age groups can foreshorten line lengths to indicate surfaces receding from a…

Regular education students (n=81) and students with serious emotional disturbance (n=81,) were matched on age (7-13), gender, race, and intelligence. They completed drawings which were scored using the "Draw a Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance." Students with emotional disturbance scored significantly higher than did…

Studies the relationships among children's aural perception of tonal pattern and children's symbol use in drawing and selection tasks based on tonal information. Shows that ability to use musical symbols in reading and writing tasks is related to aural perception of musical sound, and that these abilities follow a developmental progression. (DSK)

Demonstrates how art therapy helped a woman address her identity and memory difficulties while she managed her daily activities. The process helped her validate traumatic events in her history and provided a starting point for addressing internal conflicts. The client's artwork helped the therapist learn about the client's unconscious states. (MKA)

Introduces a notational system called pictography for temporarily preserving story content in interventions with children having language disorders. Children represent characters, settings, and action sequences with simple, stick-figure drawings. Benefits of narrative intervention are described, including facilitation of time sequence, increased…

Research suggests that children's drawings are reflective of their culture. Drawings of seven- and eight-year-old children from Japan and the United States revealed that Japanese children draw significantly fewer smiles; created larger figures; and have a higher number of details. The findings are interpreted within the context of cultural…

Studied the effects of borrowing norms for the Human Figure Drawing Test for use with children in Curacao, for whom there are no norms or studies of validity for this test. Results for 96 fourth graders suggest that frequency tables for the United States are better for scoring Human Figure Drawing Test results for these children than are Dutch…

Discusses a program designed for a multiethnic classroom setting that uses drawing and storytelling to help immigrant and refugee children build bridges between the past and the future by attaching meaning to experience. Results show that the three themes found in the children's work -- family, friends, and myths -- are factors that can protect…

Examined emergence of a writing system in 4- to 12- year-olds. Found transition occurring around age 6 in which production was more fluent for writing than drawing and activation of one system interfered with the other. Modeling consolidation of both phenomena generated testable parameters for development, involving increasing specialization and…