The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

than a fill colour, but no colour is particularly associated with form so there was no
consistent fill or outline colour.
Conclusion for the discussion of results
The results from the DAPA scales follow the general direction of the empirical literature
in that psychiatric pictures were shown to use less colour, were of lower intensity, fewer
lines were drawn and painted, they left more space, were less positive in content and
contained less dominant form than pictures by controls. However, the results do not
agree with most of the diagnostic differentiations between patient groups suggested by
the early impressionistic literature. DAPA results also disagree in the magnitude of the
patient/control differences.
Summary: There are two related likely explanations which have probably polarised the
patient/control differences and suggested other differences between patients because they
are antithetical strategies:
1. Reports from the literature could have emphasised the importance of part of a
picture because of the overwhelming influence of content on subjective
judgement;
2. The way the DAPA scores pictures reduces the importance of part of a picture
because it measures the distribution of an element over the picture plane, rather
than concentrating on how a message is conveyed over part of it. If small, the
focus point of a picture could have quite intense scores but the picture would
score mainly from the material surrounding it, in the production of averages.
303