SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE FIGURE-DRAWINGS OF CLUMSY CHILDREN

This paper presents two exploratory studies of figure drawing by clumsy children. In the first, the drawings of 42 such children and controls, matched pairwise on chronological age and verbal IQ, were compared. Not only were the impaired children's drawings found to be generally delayed but there was also a suggestion that some fell further behind their peers as they got older. In a follow up study of a subset of the clumsy group it was found that increasing delay was indeed characteristic of some children, but others improved. In spite of improvement in some aspects of figure representation, however, the children's poor motor control persisted.