Seventeen children with Down syndrome (mean chronological age 9 years
3 months, mean mental age 4 years 3 months) were individually matched
for verbal mental age or chronological age with two groups of normal c
hildren. Each child drew a man from imagination and a man from a model
. The drawings were scored using Koppitz's (1968) system. The normal 9
-year-old children produced consistently higher scores than either of
the other groups. The children with DS differed from the other groups
in that they did not show an improvement in the model task. In additio
n, whereas the normal 4-year-olds' drawing scores correlated with ment
al age those of the children with DS did not. These results are discus
sed in terms of the developmental difference debate; in particular, th
e results provide some evidence for a qualitative difference in the de
velopmental pattern of children with DS.