Children’s drawings indicate their future intelligence

New research has shown that the way a child
draws at four years old is an indictor of how
intelligent they’ll be at age 14.
Researchers from King’s College London in the
UK have discovered a link between a child’s
drawing and their later intelligence, and they've
traced it back to genetics.
The study, which has been published in
Psychological Science, looked at 7,752 pairs of
identical and non-identical twins. The scientists
asked the children at age four to draw a picture
of a child, and the researchers then scored each
figure between 0 and 12, depending on how
anatomically correct they were.
The children also had their intelligence measured
both at ages four and 14, and the scientists
found that higher scores on the Draw-a-Child
test were moderately linked to high intelligence
scores at both ages.
"The Draw-a-Child 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,” said Rosalind Arden, the lead author of
the paper, in a press release.
However, the correlation was only moderate, and
it’s important to note the findings don’t suggest
that drawing ability determines intelligence.
They simply show there’s a link between the
two.
“There are countless factors, both genetic and
environmental, which affect intelligence in later
life,” explains Arden.
Interesting, the researchers also looked at the
differences between the results of the identical
twins and the non-identical twins to measure the
heritability of drawing ability. Identical twins
share all their genes, whereas non-identical
twins share about 50 percent. But all the twins
tested shared a similar upbringing and family
environment.
Overall the results showed that identical twins
had more similar drawing skills at age four than
non-identical twins, suggesting a genetic link
between children’s drawing differences. They
also found that there’s a strong genetical link
between drawing at age four and intelligence at
age 14.
There is still a lot of research to be done on how
genes affect our abilities, but this is interesting
early research into the link between drawing and
intelligence.
Arden explains: “This does not mean that there
is a drawing gene - a child's ability to draw
stems from many other abilities, such as
observing, holding a pencil etc. We are a long
way off understanding how genes influence all
these different types of behaviour.”
"Drawing is an ancient behaviour, dating back
beyond 15,000 years ago. Through drawing, we
are attempting to show someone else what's in
our mind. This capacity to reproduce figures is a
uniquely human ability and a sign of cognitive
ability, in a similar way to writing, which
transformed the human species' ability to store
information, and build a civilisation," she adds.