The ability of a four-year-old to draw a picture of a child could indicate their intelligence later in life.
A study of 7,752 pairs of non-identical twins revealed the link between drawing and later intelligence was influenced by genes, King's College London reported.
At the age of four the children were asked to complete a "Draw-a-Child" challenge, each of which was scored between zero and 12 depending on the quality of the features. For example: a drawing with two legs, two arms, a body, and a head but no facial features would be given a score of four. The children were also given verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests between the ages of four and 14.
The team found the children who score highest on the Draw-A-Child test tended to have moderately higher levels of intelligence.
"The Draw-a-Child test was devised in the 1920's to assess children's intelligence, so the fact that the test correlated with intelligence at age 4 was expected. What surprised us was that it correlated with intelligence a decade later," said Dr. Rosalind Arden, lead author of the paper from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.
"The correlation is moderate, so our findings are interesting, but it does not mean that parents should worry if their child draws badly. Drawing ability does not determine intelligence, there are countless factors, both genetic and environmental, which affect intelligence in later life," she said.
The team conducted their test on non-identical twins because they share only about 50 percent of DNA but have similar upbringings and environments. At the ages of four identical twins' drawings were more similar than those of non-identical twins, suggesting drawing ability has a strong genetic link.
"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 [behavior]," Arden said.
"Drawing is an ancient [behavior], 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 [civilization]," she concluded.
