Skills; *Visual Arts IDENTIFIERS Artistic Thought

Two studies compared the visual preferences, cognitive abilities, and occupational interests of artists and nonartists. Study One compared scores on an experimental battery of artistic judgment tests for three groups: professional artists, Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation examinees in art-related professions, and Foundation examinees not in those fields. Study Two compared the two groups of Foundation examinees on the standard Foundation battery and the interest scales of the Career Occupational Preference System (COPS). In Study One, the artists and nonartists differed significantly on all tests in the experimental battery. On the Barron-Welsh Art Scale (BWAS), the professional artists scored significantly higher than a nonartist sample studied previously. In Study Two, on the standard battery tests, artists scored 1;ignificantly higher than nonartists in Inductive Reasoning