The Clinical and Forensic Value of Information that Children Report While Drawing

Abstract

Drawing is commonly used in clinical interviews to help children talk about their experiences. Research has shown that drawing increases the amount of information that children report about some emotional experiences. Here, we aimed to investigate the use of drawing in interviews about other, clinically relevant emotions, and the clinical and forensic relevance of the information that children report while drawing. To do this, sixty 5-to 6-and 11-to 12-year-olds drew and told, or told, about prior experiences that had made them feel happy, angry, proud (confident), and worried (nervous). For all emotions, drawing and telling increased the amount of forensically relevant, episodic details (e.g., who was there and what happened) that children reported relative to telling alone. In contrast, drawing and telling did not alter the amount of information that children reported about clinically relevant details (e.g., thoughts and emotions). We discuss the implications of these findings for using drawing in interviews with children.

Interviews with children about their mental health problems: The congruence and validity of information that children report

“…Our finding that children report clinically relevant and valid information about their problems is consistent with research with non-clinical populations, which has shown that children are able to provide detailed, relevant information about their personal, emotional experiences (Katz & Hershkowitz, 2010; Macleod et al, 2013; Patterson & Hayne, 2011; Salmon et al, 2003). Given the wide age range of children in this research, however, future research with a bigger sample size will be required for a more fine-grained analysis of age-related differences in children’s abilities to provide information about their problems and diagnoses.…”

“…Participants were 31 children aged 5–12 years (15 females; M = 9.30 years, standard error ( SE ) = .35) who had been referred for an individual mental health assessment (5- to 6-year-olds, n = 5; 7- to 8-year-olds, n = 6; 9- to 10-year-olds, n = 13; and 11- to 12-year-olds, n = 7). 1 We chose to include children as young as 5 years, because this is one of the earlier ages at which children are often asked about their personal experiences, and can provide a narrative relevant to their experiences (Gross & Hayne, 1998; Macleod et al, 2013; Patterson & Hayne, 2011; Salmon et al, 2003; Shakoor et al, 2011). We included children aged up to 12 years to capture children who would not yet be classed as adolescents.…”

Drawing conclusions: Instructing witnesses to draw what happened to them

“…In these designs, participants (from early childhood to adolescence depending on the study) were asked to either think of or draw a time when they were happy, sad, scared, or angry. These studies showed consistent results across all samples and ages: participants who drew reported significantly more details about the event than those who did not (Gross & Hayne, 1998;Macleod et al, 2013;Patterson & Hayne, 2011;Salmon et al, 2003;Wesson & Salmon, 2001). Like forensic field studies, accuracy of reports could not be verified with certainty; however, parental reports of the likely accuracy of their child's memories suggested that the accuracy was similar in the draw-and-tell conditions and the tell-only conditions (Gross & Hayne, 1998;Patterson & Hayne, 2011).…”

“…Studies with samples aged from early‐ to middle‐childhood reported some mixed findings. Drawing was found to facilitate recall of autobiographical details but not non‐autobiographical factual details (after a delay; Gross et al., 2009); objects and adjectives/adverbs but not people, places, or actions (Gross & Hayne, 1998); episodic details but not evaluative (emotional) details (Macleod et al., 2013); adjectives/adverbs and actions but not objects, people, and places (Salmon et al., 2003); and adjectives/adverbs and objects but not actions, people, places, or emotions (Wesson & Salmon, 2001). Thus, the completeness of autobiographical descriptions of events were consistently facilitated by drawing in early to middle childhood, but the benefit was not observed for all types of details.…”

Drawing on memory: A meta‐analytic review

“…However, drawing is also used in professional settings (e.g. forensic, clinical and therapeutic) to help comfort and/or distract individuals when experiences are difficult to discuss (MacLeod et al., 2013; Poole & Dickinson, 2013). Thus, more studies are required to examine the effects of non‐event‐focused drawing (e.g.…”