A Study Exploring the Use of hte Person Picking an Apple Assessment and the Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale with Groups of Artists and Non-Artists

This study hypothesized that there will be a significant difference between trained artists and non-artists who complete a Person Picking an Apple from a Tree (PPAT) art-based assessment, rated using the Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS). Fifteen Artists and 15 Non-Artists participated in this quantitative study. Each participant was asked to draw “a person picking an apple from a tree (PPAT) and complete the State Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI-30) questionnaire. The data collected was analyzed looking at differences and correlations. The results indicated that the Artist group had a higher averaged score than the Non-Artist group on 9 of the FEATS scales. The Non-Artist group had a higher average score on 3 of the FEATS scales. The results for the t test showed the difference between FEATS sums (Artist vs. Non-artist) to be not statistically significant with the two-tailed P value equaling 0.3600. The Correlation between Artist group on FEATS and the STCI is a positive 0.10. The Correlation between the Non-Artist group on the FEATS and STCI was a negative -0.03. The results of this study suggest that Artists’ trained abilities aide them in scoring higher than Non-artists on some of the FEATS 14 scales; the correlation and differences are not statistically high enough to be significant