Grapheme development in handicapped children's drawings.

According to F. Olivier children's drawings are composed of basic shapes called graphemes. Three sets of these graphemes develop between the ages of 3 and 5 yr. A cross-cultural study had shown no difference in grapheme development between Turkish and German children. When the drawings of physically handicapped children were compared with those of normally developing children, a significant difference was found in the third step of grapheme development, the production of symmetrical graphemes. Physically handicapped children are retarded by comparison with normally developing ones in rendering graphemes symmetrical. The reason for this might by asymmetry in their body schema.