Emotional indicators in children's human figure drawings

The human figure drawings of a group of emotionally-disturbed boys were com pared with those of a group of well-adjusted boys closely matched for chron ological age and another for mental age. A comparison based on Koppitz's (1 968) original emotional indicators and another, based on new UK norms, show ed that the emotionally-disturbed children included significantly more indi cators in their drawings than their well-adjusted peers. Although this diff erence was statistically significant it is actually quite small. In additio n, there were no differences among the groups in the kinds of indicators th ey exhibited. The usefulness of the Koppitz test as a tool for clinical use is questioned.