1 Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia
2 Phoebe A. Hearst Preschool Learning Center, San Francisco
Pediatricians have always been alert to the study of the various phases of child development. Yet, for some reason we have continued to neglect childhood scribblings as an obvious facet important to pediatric study. We now have available to us some beginning insights into child art. Some of the implications of this work have been mentioned in this paper.
Certainly we should take a long look at the accepted psychological and psychiatric drawing tests which are currently used to study and assess children's mental development and childhood's emotional ills.
We should acquaint parents with the child's need to have access to scribbling experiences without adult interference. It may be that we have at hand a simple tool by means of which we can help prevent the development of reading problems in some children.
It is premature to suggest that in the study of adult phosphenes and childhood scribblings we have a tool for the study of developing neuronal patterns (and all that this implies), but the common denominators found in all child art deserve intensive scientific study.
Submitted on February 6, 1967