1. Jessica Williamson Kane
Draw-A-Man
The Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test
Jessica Williamson Kane

2. “The nature and content of children’s drawings are dependent primarily upon intellectual development.”
- Florence Goodenough
“The child’s drawing of any object will reveal the discriminations he has made about that object as belonging to a class, i.e., as a concept.”
- Dale B. Harris

3. Florence Goodenough Born on August 6th in 1886 in Honesdale, PA
Education
1908 – Bachelor of Pedagogy: PA Normal School
1920 – Bachelor of Science: Columbia University
1921 – Master of Arts: Columbia University
1924 – Doctor of Psychology: Stanford University
Worked with Lewis Terman at Stanford as he developed the Stanford-Binet intelligence test
Developed the Draw-A-Man test in 1926
The test was designed to track the intellectual maturity and concept development of pre- and non-literate children
Revised the Stanford-Binet into Minnesota Preschool Scale
Criticized the use of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) to measure mental age
Published 9 textbooks, 26 research studies, numerous articles, and wrote a Handbook of Child Psychology
Died of a stroke in 1959

4. Dale B. Harris and his Contributions
Born in 1914
Worked with Goodenough to publish his book
Revised and extended the Goodenough Test to include:
Drawing a woman
Drawing the self
Standard score conversion table that can be normed
Different scoring scales for male and female subjects
The Goodenough-Harris test has been used in new ways in the field of psychology
Personality tests
Effects of sensory loss
Children with learning differences

5. Introduction
The Goodenough-Harris Draw-a-Man test proposes that a child’s intellectual maturity can be gauged by evaluating his drawing of a man.
In the drawings of a child, a close relationship exists between concept development and general intelligence.
The drawings are assessed according to very specific criteria and a score is determined.
This score corresponds directly to the presence and accurate depiction of various elements of a drawing of a man.
Why a man?
Familiar, consistent, simple and complex, universal.
A child draws what he knows, not what he sees.

6. Proposal
According to Goodenough, boys and girls of particular ages display qualitative differences in the drawings they make. Up to the age of twelve, girls generally show more attention to detail and score higher on the Goodenough-Harris test than boys. However, other investigations that inspect the drawing as a whole report a marked sex difference in favour of the boys. I am interested to see whether these results will hold for the drawings produced by children in kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 4th grade.

7. Important Terms
Cognitive development – the child’s development of perception, conceptualizing, knowing, judging, and reasoning
Concept development – the process of discriminating objects as belonging to a particular, identifiable class
Mental Age – the age to which a person’s intellectual maturity most corresponds, separate to their chronological or behavioral age
Raw Score – the total number of items scored as present and correctly depicted on the Drawing Test
Standard Score – the raw score converted to a specific, meanable scale

8. Hypothesis In this study I hope to find:
The drawings produced by the girls show greater attention to detail than the drawings produced by the boys.
There are more list items present in their drawings and they achieve a higher raw score.
The drawings produced by the boys have a greater sense of “whole” and completeness than those produced by the girls.
Although they do not show more list items or achieve a higher raw score, their drawings are complete and have additional features such as background or props.

9. Guiding Questions
Will the drawings produced in this study be congruent with the findings of the initial study performed by Goodenough (and confirmed by Harris) in the following ways:
The drawings produced by girls will have more details than those produced by the boys, and thus have a higher raw score.
The drawings produced by boys will have a greater sense of completeness than those produced by the girls.
What do the results of this study show about the cognitive and concept development of the boys and girls?

10. Data and Analysis I tested a total of 16 children:
2 boys and 2 girls from Kindergarten
3 boys and 3 girls from 2nd Grade
3 boys and 3 girls from 4th Grade
Each drawing was assessed to determine the raw score according to the Test Manual provided by Goodenough and Harris.
Each drawing was then assessed at my discretion according to “wholeness” and completeness.
The child's identity (Number) and chronological age (CA) were recorded, and the child was given a numerical value based on whether their drawing was complete, and whether there were additional features
1 for positive results and 0 for negative results

11. Scoring
The Raw Score is determined by the presence and correct depiction of the items on this list
Total of 73 points
The Standard Score is calculated using a specific scale that expresses the child’s relative standing in relation to his or her own age and sex group.
With a calculated mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.

12. 4th Grade

13. 2nd Grade

14. Jessica Williamson Kane
Kindergarten

15. Score Comparisons - Standard
Chronological Age
Standard Score
Back

16. Score Comparisons - Averages
Jessica Williamson Kane
Score Comparisons - Averages
Grade Level
Average Standard Score
Back

17. Wholeness Comparisons
Jessica Williamson Kane
Wholeness Comparisons
Males
Females
Number CA
Complete
Features
Sum 2 10 1 6 4 9 8 13 7 18 19 5
Wholeness: 11
Number CA
Complete
Features
Sum 5 10 1 3 9 12 8 7 11 20 21
Wholeness: 6
1 = Positive 0 = Negative

18. Scoring Results Standard Averages
According to the data for Standard Scores, only half of the girls scored higher than the boys.
At least one girl from each age group scored higher than the boys in her age group.
According to the data for the calculated averages, the girls scored higher than the boys.
In two out of the three groups assessed, the average score for the girls was significantly higher than the boys’.
In the case where the boys scored higher, the discrepancy was only 2 (two) points.
Standard
Averages

19. Wholeness Results
According to the data, the boys’ drawings showed more completeness than the girls’.
Every boy produced a complete drawing, whereas two of the girls had incomplete drawings.
They also showed more instances of features such as background or props.
Three of the boys had additional features present in their drawings, whereas none of the girls did.
Overall, the boys’ drawings had almost double a sense of “whole” and completeness.

20. Conclusions My hypothesis that girls would score higher is correct.
This confirms Goodenough and Harris’ findings that up to the age of twelve, girls generally show more attention to detail in their drawings.
However, boys were not far behind in their scores. This means that both sexes are at the same approximate level of concept development.
My hypothesis that the boys’ drawings would have a greater sense of “whole” and completeness is correct.
This confirms the findings that up to the age of twelve, boys produce a more complete drawing.
The wholeness of the boys’ drawings compensates for their lower scores, which reiterates my conclusion that both sexes are at the same approximate level of concept development.

21. Limitations and Revisions
Jessica Williamson Kane
Limitations and Revisions
I encountered the following limitations:
Small and limited sample groups
I managed to assess only three or two drawings from each age and sex group, which substantially limits the data.
The students assessed represent a limited group of our society.
Inexperience with scoring the drawings
I did not have a lot of time to practice scoring, and so the results I got could be inaccurate.
If I were to perform the test again, I would:
Expand the sample groups to include children from different socio-economic background, schools, and groups of society.
Practice with more drawings!

22. Where do they stand? Nature Nurture
I believe that Goodenough and Harris fall on the Nature-Nurture continuum in the following way:
Intelligence is a stable entity
Concept development is not something that can be taught
Nature
Nurture
Rousseau
Locke
Goodenough & Harris