Factors in artistic aptitude: Final summary of a ten-year study of a special ability.

Abstract

Introduction. With passage of time permitting a decade of observation on the same subjects and a wide variety of approaches to test other hypotheses on considerable groups it is now possible to lay down certain observations on the nature of artistic aptitude, which, in the sense that anything in science may be " final", epitomize the complete findings. The principal conclusions rest mainly on the experimental work of research assistants, the case-study records of six talented and six nontalented children and the life histories of forty-one American artists, although much more data enters into specific phases of the findings.The finding of greatest interest is a new theory of talent which, for the first time, clearly indicates the specific interaction of the inherited aspects of talent with the learned phases. There can be no adequate understanding of artistic aptitude rvithout both being taken into account. The view presented herein places the greater emphasis upon heredity, but extreme care must be taken by the reader to note the particular aspect of heredity involvedconstitutional stock inheritance-not direct inheritance, in the commonly assumed sense, from parents. Only one of the six factors is strongly referable to inheritance-manual skill-yet

Leta Stetter Hollingworth's contributions to the study of art talent

“…Manual (1919) reported his study of students who were talented in drawing in relation to psychological characteristics, general intelligence, linguistic ability, motor ability, and handwriting ability. Meier (1939), a psychologist at the University of Iowa, claimed that characteristics such as aesthetic intelligence, perceptual facility, and creative imagination could be used to differentiate between children with below average, average, and superior abilities in the visual arts. B eginning in 1933, under the leadership of Munro (1956), an important series of studies of students' art abilities was begun at the Cleveland Museum of Art.…”

The Magical Number Five in Art Appreciation

“…In a summary of a 10-year study of artistic ability, Meier (1939) characterizes the artistic child as showing a constellation of excellent abilities at the same time. Winner (1982) states: "The art of reading painting depends on a multiplicity of skills" (p. 142).…”

Critical Thinking as Predictor of Drawing Ability

“…It may, however, be interesting to note that in the correlation Ennis, Millman, and Tomko (1985), Frisby (1991), Adiseshiah (1977), Miller (1990), and Phillips, Uprichard, and Johnson (1974) all indicate a relationship between age and critical thinking ability although Frisby's meta-analysis showed analysis there is significant intercorrelation between GR (grade level) and the CCTT (p> .07) which indicates that critical thinking ability is more a function of learning than simply getting older. Meier (1939) discussed the importance of encouragement, nurturing, and modeling in the development of artistically talented individuals. Artistically talented people are influenced by a number of factors which are inherited, acquired, and learned.…”