Relationships between the SDT and Traditional Tests

Relationships

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Copyright 1983/1990/1996 by Rawley Silver, reprinted with permission

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The following are excerpts from

Silver, R. A. (1996).  Silver Drawing Test of cognition and emotion. Sarasota, FL: Ablin Press.

6. Correlations Between SDT Scores and Scores on 6 Traditional Tests

In addition to the art therapy program, the National Institute of Education Project (1980) examined the relationship of the SDT to six traditional tests of intelligence or achievement. They included the Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test (CCAT), The Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT), The Otis Lennon School Ability Test, The SRA Math Achievement Test, The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (Composite), and The WISC Performance IQ which was used in testing deaf children.

Although significant relationships were found between the SDT and these traditional tests, the reliability coefficients were low, as shown in Table 11. The correlations with Drawing from Imagination were modest while correlations with Drawing from Observation were significant only with the Iowa Composite Test. Thus the relationships between these tests and the SDT are only moderate.

The traditional tests are heavily weighted with verbal items which do not appear at all on the SDT. On the other hand, the SDT taps cognitive skills that are not included on these tests. All the instruments assess intellectual ability, but use different assessment techniques, and emphasize language and visuo-spatial cognitive skills to different extents.

TABLE 11. Relationships Between Scores on the SDT and Scores on the CCAT, Otis Lennon, WISC Performance IQ, MAT Reading, and SRA Math

What can't be explained by correlations with these traditional tests can be explained by other cognitive strengths not measured by these tests. Joey, was not alone in having low scores on a traditional test and high scores on the SDT in Predictive Drawing, only 18 of 136 children received the highest possible scores, and 8 of the 18 had IQ scores ranging between 50 on the Stanford Binet, and 140 on the Draw A Man test. Their ages ranged between 10 and 13.

The SDT has been presented to audiences of teachers and other professionals. Without fail, some confuse spatial relationships in drawing from observation, or draw houses perpendicular to the slope, or lines parallel to the sides of the tilted bottle.

How can this finding be explained? The obvious answer, lack of talent in art seems inadequate because the drawing tasks call for more than art skills. It may be instead, that adults who say they cannot draw a straight line have difficulty in processing spatial information. They may have subtle cognitive dysfunctions easily overlooked because our schools emphasize verbal skills, and it does not matter if students cannot draw. By the same token, subtle cognitive strengths may also be escaping detection. It may well be important to identify and evaluate these strengths if they can be used to assist students with language dysfunctions to acquire concepts usually acquired verbally.

The results lend support to the hypothesis that the SDT measures cognitive skills through the use of drawings rather than language. The Predictive Drawing subtest is based on the theory that it measures ability to predict and represent concepts of sequential order, horizontality, and verticality, as stated in Chapter 2. The Drawing from Observation subtest is based on the theory that it measures ability to represent spatial relationships in height, width, and depth. The Drawing from Imagination subtest is based on the theory that it measures levels of ability to select, combine, and represent through images instead of words. These cognitive abilities appear relatively independent of language-impairment and verbal-analytical thinking, and to some extent independent of age.

The findings support the premise that the SDT can be used to identify cognitive skills in children with known language deficiencies such as the deaf, language-impaired, learning disabled, and disadvantaged as well as adults who who cannot communicate well verbally. These results also explain why we have found unexpected cognitive strengths in some children when using the SDT - strengths which do not appear on other tests.

page 83-85.

Copyright 1996 Rawley Silver

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