| The present study was conducted to provide empirical support for the use of drawing in facilitating children's narrative about emotional events. Further, this study specifically examined the facilitative role of drawing as it related to parent marital status, life stressors, and children's coping. Fifty-nine six, seven, and eight-year-old children were interviewed about personally significant “Mad” and “Sad” emotional events. Children who drew a picture of the event while talking provided significantly longer and richer narratives than children who only talked. A similar trend emerged for children from homes where parents were divorced/separated. Children from divorced/separated homes experienced significantly more stressors than children from married homes. The number of life stressors children had experienced according to parent report was significantly positively correlated to the length of children's Mad narratives. Drawing was effective in eliciting longer and richer narratives from children whose parents rated them as displaying clinically significant internalizing and/or externalizing coping strategies. Finally, while few differences emerged in the general qualitative themes of children's narratives between experimental conditions, results of the quantitative content analysis revealed that children who drew provided significantly more descriptions to their Sad narratives than children who only talked. Possible underlying mechanisms for these findings as well as implications of this study clinical, legal, and general contexts are discussed. |
