Abstract
Gombrich’s words are exquisitely pertinent to introduce Nadia, a child who turns upside down all our notions of the development of graphic representation. How incredible we found her, when we first saw her at the Child Development Research Unit, Nottingham University, may be understood when I explain that, some years earlier, we had been the fortunate inheritors of twenty-four-thousand children’s ‘pictures of mummy’, the results of a Sunday newspaper competition, and had spent some time analysing the stage-development of the ability to depict the human form. As a result, we had mounted an exhibition** for the British Association for the Advancement of Science; and we thought we knew what was possible for a six-year-old and what was not.
‘To marvel is the beginning of knowledge and when we cease to marvel we may be in danger of ceasing to know’.
Gombrich
With an Introduction and Postscript by Elizabeth Newson.
This brief report is published as a much more detailed study (in press): Seife, L., Nadia: a case of extraordinary drawing ability in an autistic child, Academic Press, 1977.
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© 1977 Plenum Press, New York
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Selfe, L. (1977). A Single Case Study of an Autistic Child with Exceptional Drawing Ability. In: Butterworth, G. (eds) The Child’s Representation of the World. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2349-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2349-5_2
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