Drawing self and others: How do children with autism differ from those with learning difficulties?

• Published in: British journal of developmental psychology Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 547 - 565
• Main Authors: Lee, Anthony, Peter Hobson, R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2006; British Psychological Society
• Subjects: Adolescents; Autism; Autistic adolescents; Autistic children; Biological and medical sciences; Child clinical studies; Children; Comparative Analysis; Developmental disorders; Developmental Psychology; Empirical research; Figure drawings; Freehand Drawing; Infantile autism; Interpersonal Competence; Learning disabilities; Learning disabled adolescents; Learning disabled children; Learning Problems; Medical sciences; Neurological Impairments; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Self-perception; Selfrepresentation; Social environment; Human; Learning; Autism; Acquisition process; Adolescent; Intellectual deficiency; Developmental disorder; Self; Mental retardation; Child; Pictural drawing
• ISSN: 0261-510X; 2044-835X
• DOI: 10.1348/026151005X49881

When children draw pictures of human beings, they reveal things not only about their general intellectual and artistic abilities, but also about their awareness and conception of themselves and others. What might the human figure drawings of children with autism reveal about their images of self and other – and what might they disclose about social factors that shape the drawings of children who do not have autism? On the basis of an hypothesis about the restricted social awareness of children and adolescents with autism, we predicted that there would be little differentiation between their drawings of themselves and other people. To test this prediction, we investigated a group of children and adolescents with autism and a group with learning difficulties but not autism (N = 14 per group) who were individually matched for both chronological age and verbal mental age. Participants with autism mostly drew human figures that were little distinguished from one another, but introduced clear contrasts among their houses, whereas most of those with learning difficulties drew distinctive human figures as well as houses. These different profiles of performance occurred despite similarities in the numbers and kinds of feature included in the drawings, and the individuality of participants' drawing styles. Although the results were in keeping with our hypothesis that human figure drawings might reflect abnormalities in the way that children with autism mentally represent themselves and others, we conclude by stressing our tentativeness over this interpretation of the findings.