The Classification of Memory Pictures by Students. Reproduction Memory — Identification Memory

Abstract

At this point I think we should look at the subject from the opposite point of view. We should no longer ask the test persons to choose between drawings and answers prepared by us. Instead, we should set them a subject and ask them to make their own drawings. I know that there is a great deal of reservation about employing this method, because of claims that, when it comes to drawing, people are so very differently gifted and, particularly, that their education in the subject has been to such different standards, not to mention the different conventions that exist. My answer to this is talented, above-average draughtsmen are so rare that they can be ignored in a statistical examination, and that far more than 90% of present-day German school-leavers have received no education in drawing at all, the reason being that most art teachers are unable to draw. The general knowledge of German school-leavers is of a similarly low level, as we have shown using other questionnaires²⁷.