Drawing Development in Autistic and Mentally Retarded Children

The drawing and copying skills of nine autistic and eight mentally retarded children matched for mental age were investigated on 5 drawing and 4 copying tasks. The tasks were administered over 8 consecutive sessions, yielding a total of 20 drawings and 16 copies per child. Results indicate that the performance of the two groups is comparable on the drawing tasks and differs significantly on the copying tasks. The austistic group was superior to the mentally retarded group on variables that assessed graphic form, degree of detail, attention to occlusions that eliminate lines hidden from view, and representation of the third dimension.