Children's recognition memory for their drawings

One hundred preschool boys and girls (2 1/2 and 5 1/2 year old) were asked to recognize four drawings they had made a week earlier. The child's drawing was presented with three foils which varied along the following dimensions: detail, size, and perspective. Chance performance was .25 correct; the group's performance of .34 correct was significantly different from chance (p < .0001); the oldest children's performance was .39 correct (p < .0001). These performances are impressive because of the slight variation between the target and foil drawings. The amount of differentiation in the children's drawings may be a factor in the ease of recognition.