A Comparison of the Elements of Draw- a- Person Test (DAP) in Children with Spelling Disorders and Normal Children

Background and Spelling learning disability is one of the most common childhood disorders. In recent years¡ several methods have been developed for the diagnosis of this disorder. That detection of the various elements of the drawings is one of these methods. The aim of this study was to compare children with and without spelling disorder in the test elements of the draw a person.
Design of this study was causal-comparative. 50 girl students with spelling disorder and 50 students without spelling disorder were chosen through the random cluster sampling method.
To gather of dadta¡ Raven’s progressive matrices¡ Draw a person test (DAP) and the diagnostic Spelling test of Fallahchai¡ were used.
The results of Chi-square and T-test revealed that there is significant differents between the drawings elements in the children with and without the disorder (p>./05). The persons drawn by children with spelling disorders included shapes which were more simple and smaller than shapes drawn by normal children. There were fewer details in the drawings of children with spelling disorders than in the drawings of normal children. Also¡ the disregard of coordination and symmetry and omission of the person''s body members and the general low quality were very evident in the drawings of children with spelling disorders in comparison with those drawn by normal children.
The findings have diagnostic value of drawing associated with learning disorders¡ especially in spelling disorder. Existence the difference between the levels of test elements of drawing in children with and without spelling disorder means that the elements of the drawing can be used to identify children with spelling disorder.