Project Zero was founded in 1967 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to study the philosophy and psychology of the arts and to improve arts education. The initial intent of Project Zero researchers to examine the philosophy and psychology of the arts was expanded into the areas of cognitive development, cognitive skills, television for children, and artistic giftedness and creativity. The chapters in Art, Mind, and Education cover not only the visual arts but also nonliteral language, music, computers as mappers of cognitive thinking, and the use of metaphors by children. Among the contributors to this book, Elizabeth Rosenblatt and Ellen Winner studied children's drawings as a means of understanding children's artistic knowledge in the areas of perception and artistic reflection and of distinguishing perceptual skills of talented children. Focusing on repleteness, expression, and composition, the authors conclude that drawings serve the child not as art but as nonverbal form of communication through symbols.
Gifted children are advanced in technical skills, prefer themes, and have long visual memories.
The skill of reflection develops early and is qualitatively different in both the verbally and visually precocious child. Dennie Wolf and Martha Davis Perry focus on the development of drawing systems. The use of graphic genres, specific renditions of objects, and the development of a drawing repertoire were studied. Changes which occur were found to be age linked, and an instructor's understanding of these stages can be used to aid a student in attaining drawing skills. They argue that the use of computers as translators of sounds or images to numerical data provides opportunities for the manipulation of symbols that allow artist rapid translation possibilities.