'What's in a picture'? A comparison of drawings by apes and children

Between 1993 and 2004, 1 gathered about 340 pictures by apes and fifty seven by human children to conduct a study of the similarities and differences between the non-representational output of chimpanzees, gorillas, orang utans, and human children. Excluding the one bonobo picture, I analyzed 396 works in terms of number of colors, first and last color preferences, use of novel colors, respect for boundaries, negative space, placement, and pattern. Where possible, I compared outputs by gender as well as by species. My most significant discoveries were the almost universal preferences for yellow as a first color (although blue occurred in more pictures), the high use of diagonal lines by all species, the preference for novel brown of all constructed colors, and the preference for centered patterns. The features that distinguished species included numbers of colors chosen, level of respect for boundaries, frequency of negative spaces in pictures, and last color preferences. Males and females showed overall differences in last color preference (which ends up being the final emphasis of the piece), males focused on the use of four colors, and showed less respect for boundaries. Females used a wider range of colors, a central placement, and nearly half the time, stayed inside the confines of the page. These differences strongly support the hypothesis that there are considered choices occurring in the production of these pictures which can reveal some idea of how various species see and respond to stimuli. These are definitely not random scribbles, and are worth investigation for their metacommunicative content.