Kids' portraits an indicator of IQ

20 August 2014 - 02:01
By Miranda Prynne, ©The Daily Telegraph
Image: SUPPLIED

A four-year-old child's ability to draw can be used to predict how intelligent he will be 10 years later, scientists claim.

Parents might giggle about their offsprings' scrawled artworks but their creative efforts might have serious implications, the research suggests.

The quality of the pictures is linked to the child's genetic make-up, the study by King's College, London, noted.

Children who produced the best drawings often scored well in verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests when they were four and also when they were 14.

But the researchers said that parents of children who lack artistic skills should not panic because drawing ability does not determine intelligence, which is affected by a large range of factors. Psychologists got 15504 four-year-olds to take part in a "draw-a-child" test, rating each picture with a score of zero to 12.

Artworks were judged on the presence and correct quantity of features such as eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, body and arms.

The study, published in Psychological Science, recorded a "moderate" association between higher drawing scores and the intelligence test results of children at the age of four and at 14.

Dr Rosalind Arden, lead author of the paper, of the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, said: "The test was devised in the 1920s to assess children's intelligence so the fact that the test correlated with intelligence at age four was expected. What surprised us was that it correlated with intelligence a decade later.

"The correlation is moderate, so our findings are interesting, but parents should not worry if their child draws badly.

"Drawing ability does not determine intelligence, there are countless factors that affect intelligence in later life."

The researchers found the link was influenced by genes, after comparing the results of identical twins, whose genetic code is identical, and non-identical twins, who share half their DNA.

Identical twins aged four produced drawings and test scores more similar to one another than non-identical twins.

"The finding that greater accuracy in children's figure drawing is associated genetically with higher intelligence a decade later is thought-provoking and demonstrates that the study of art and the study of science have much to offer each other," the authors wrote.

"Evolutionary selection on drawing ability might have been an important precursor to writing, which transformed our capacity to store information externally."

Arden added: "A child's ability to draw stems from many other abilities, such as observing, or holding a pencil. We are a long way off understanding how genes influence all these behaviours."

When scoring the children's pictures, a point was awarded for each correct feature, so drawing of a figure with two legs rather than four would get one point. Any clothing also scored a point.

The rating system ignored features such as proportion, "charm" and " emotion".

Drawings varied greatly between the children, ranging from disorganised scribbles that scored zero, to pictures depicting recognisable faces, bodies and limbs, worth 10 points.

"Drawing is an ancient behaviour, dating back beyond 15000 years. Through drawing we are attempting to show someone else what's in our mind," Arden said. "This capacity to draw figures is a uniquely human ability and a sign of cognitive ability in a similar way to writing."

The scientists said it was not known whether children who did well in the test were likely to develop an interest in art.

They wrote: "This study does not explain artistic talent. The scores quantify only accuracy of attributes. But our results do show that, whatever conflicting theories adults have about the value of verisimilitude in early figure drawing, children who express it to a greater extent are somewhat brighter than those who do not."