Severely disturbed children's human figure drawings: are they unusual or just poor drawings?

Previous research has shown that the human figure drawings of severely dist urbed children contain more emotional indicators than those of well-adjuste d children, whether the well-adjusted children are of the same chronologica l age or are younger but of the same mental age as the severely disturbed c hildren. This finding suggests that the disturbed children's drawings may b e different rather than merely immature. A problem with previous research, however, is that groups have not been matched for drawing ability. In study 1 of this paper each drawing of 44 severely disturbed boys was matched wit h that of a normal boy according to its score on the Goodenough-Harris scor ing system. There was no significant difference between the groups in the n umber of emotional indicators included in the drawings. Furthermore, in stu dy 2, judges could not discriminate the drawings of the two groups. It was concluded that the differences noted in previous research were most likely due to the poorer drawing ability of the severely disturbed children rather than unusual features in their drawings.