The influence of graphic expression activities on kindergarten children's oral language expression was investigated. It was hypothesized that, regardless of the sex, race, or socioeconomic status (SES) of the subjects, children provided with an opportunity to express themselves graphically would talk more about a prior experience than children who…

This study investigated preschool children's awareness of the nature of pictorial representation and their understanding of their own efforts to depict. Seventy-six subjects participated in drawing sessions held at 2-week intervals throughout the 8-month school year. Children's spontaneous comments during small-group drawing sessions were…

When Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Scale was administered to 26 healthy and 26 chronically ill children, it was found that the chronically ill were significantly more anxious than the healthy. Results also suggested that the question of sex differences in children's emotional response to illness deserves further investigation in studies…

Mexican children from Cosomaloapan (male dominated) and Tehuantepec (female dominated) were asked to draw "the person you'd like to be." In Cosomaloapan, 96% of the females and 93% of the males drew their own sex. In Tehuantepec, 76% of the males and 71% of the females drew theirs. There were highly significant between-city differences…

Two studies investigated examiner scoring agreement on the Oral Vocabulary, Draw-A-Design, and Draw-A-Child subtests of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. In study one, ten examiners scored four randomly selected normal children's protocols. Unanimous agreement occurred on scores for 52% of the Oral Vocabulary responses, 39% of the…

In a pilot study of children's drawings of "a house with a tree behind it," Piagetian sequence (scribbling, fortuitous realism, failed realism, intellectual realism, and visual realism) was tentatively supported. Children's strategies in decentering from intellectual to visual realism were noted. The study reported in this paper was…

This report documents the development of instructional objectives and accompanying measurement criteria for an elementary school art curriculum for grades 3-5. Results are from the three schools which participated in the study: an inner-city school with no special emphasis on art; a suburban school with much emphasis on art; and a transitional…

The test-retest reliability of criteria often used in diagnosing brain damage through the use of children's drawings was found to be low. A review of the literature showed different opinions on what drawing characteristics were indicative of brain damage. Low test-retest reliabilities may explain the variations in the literature. (Author/GDC)

Three studies explored children's adoption of cultural forms of representation. Investigated were (1) children's judgments from students' drawings about the age of the artist; (2) children's preferences for drawings and the extent preferences match teachers'; and (3) differences between drawings children produce for themselves and those they…

The visual arts can be employed as a counseling vehicle for gifted, creative, and talented students. Color, image proportion, subject matter, and texture in student art facilitate assessment and guidance. Craft, drawing, painting, photography, printing, design, and sculpture activities which could help in this process are briefly described. (CB)

Normative data collected for the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test from children (ages 7-14) in urban and rural Alberta and for Inuit children in the Northwest Territories, Canada, were consistently below the Harris norms particularly for the Draw-a-Woman test. Alternate sets of Draw-a-Person norms are proposed for use with these groups. (Author/VW)

A model of human language requires a theory of meaningful marks. Humans are the only species who use marks to think. A theory of marks identifies children's scribbles as significant behavior, while hypothesizing the importance of notational systems to hominid brain evolution. By recognizing the importance of children's scribbles and drawings in…

This study investigated the variation of meaning that may be assigned by students to instructional symbol systems. Toward this end, student interpretations of symbols employed to represent free fall in Boxer, a computational environment designed for innovative instructional activities in math and science, were analyzed. Four classes of…

The focus of this special issue is how art facilitates the cognitive maturation of the child. In the last 20 years, the copious research conducted in the field of children's art and artistic development underscores that children's intellectual, as well as emotional development, is of long-standing and continuing interest. (RM)

Some data on sex and handedness in relation to academic predictors and success in architectural education were reexamined. The new variable was the notion of visual thinking, measured by the manner, "visually" or "cognitively," of executing a simple line drawing. As expected, significant differences appeared between persons using these modes.…