Koppitz Emotional Indicators in the Human-Figure Drawings of Children With Learning Problems

Human-figure drawings of 316 public school pupils, half of whom were referred for counseling services, were analyzed using the Koppitz system of indicators of emotionality. Subjects in the study were considered to be either learning disabled, educationally handicapped, behavior disordered, or ineligible for special education services on the basis of their most recent psychological evaluation. The results demonstrated that the counseling-referred children's drawings contained a higher number of many of the Koppitz emotional indicators than did the drawings of nonreferred children. However, school psychologists were not able to distinguish the drawings of counseling-referred pupils from those of the nonreferred using clinical inspection. The results of a discriminant function analysis suggested that the learning-disabled students could be distinguished from the other groups on the basis of the type of emotional indicator present in their protocols. A factor analysis of the data produced one easily interpretable factor comprised of emotional indicators for missing body parts within the drawings.