Critical Analysis of Children’s Drawings as a Diagnostic Tool for Body Schema and Body Image Disorder in Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy is a multiple disability manifested by motor deficits and impairments of cognition, language, and body perception. To assess if body schema and body image distortion in children and youth with cerebral palsy can be represented through draw-a-person-test, outcome measure of conscious and subconscious body awareness, visual perception and cognition in two age-matched groups, one with cerebral palsy and other with developmental disability, were collected. The outcome was compared within the two groups and with reference data (healthy population) and correlated with the outcome of draw-a-person test. Decreased scores in the draw-a-person test in subjects with cerebral palsy compared both to subjects with developmental disorders and to healthy population had strongly correlated with decreased scores in visual perception. This suggests that draw-a-person test may provide a preliminary guidance for the assessment of visual perception. No statistically significant effect of cognitive abilities on performance in the draw-a-person test was found. The influence of both conscious and subconscious body awareness on the scores in the draw-a-person test was not significant, which confirms that this test alone is not fully reliable to detect the body schema and body image disorder in cerebral palsy.