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Drawing and disclosure of experienced events in an art therapy investigative interview process with school aged children: a qualitative comparative analogue study
Dissertation   Open access

Drawing and disclosure of experienced events in an art therapy investigative interview process with school aged children: a qualitative comparative analogue study

Marcia Sue Cohen-Liebman
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Dec 2017
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-7830
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Abstract

Art therapy Psychology
The purpose of this study was to explore how drawing as an open ended prompt in an investigative interview enhances recall and facilitates evidentiary disclosure. More specifically, this study explored the use of drawing as a primary resource in an investigative interview process that is based on art therapy principles and practices. The research question for this study was; "How does drawing facilitate disclosure of experienced events of school aged children in an art therapy based investigative interview process when compared to a verbal investigative interview process?" The Common Interview Guideline (CIG), a Forensic Art Therapy Investigative Interview process was both the investigative tool as well as the object of study. Secondarily, underlying mechanisms culled from the literature associated with the drawing effect were explored from an art therapy perspective. The study sought to retrieve data that was rich and descriptive thus, a qualitative comparative analogue design was used in which data between two study conditions; CIG with drawing and CIG without drawing were compared. The analogue design encompassed the topic of bullying which was presented through the use of two short animated videos featuring McGruff, the Crime Dog and his anti-bullying platform. The videos provided the context for the investigative interviews. Content Analysis was used to organize, code, aggregate and analyze textual and imaginal data. Dedoose, a data analysis software program was used to assist in the identification and acquisition of meaningful insights through highlighting units of analysis which included words, phrases, and imaginal data. Three overarching themes emerged from the data; Fact-Finding, Imagery and Relationality. The themes were congruent with the CIG which is predicated upon rapport building, attunement to a child's developmental capabilities, fact-finding and minimization of re-traumatization (Cohen-Liebman, 1999, 2003, Gussak & Cohen-Liebman, 2001). The findings suggest that the use of imagery whether mental, visual or pictorial enhanced memory recall and facilitated enhanced disclosure. Seven underlying mechanisms associated with the facilitative effect of drawing culled from the literature were identified by the children as contributing to enhanced recall. The rationale for using the CIG as the investigative tool for this study is to explore how drawing facilitates recall and disclosure (evidence) in investigative interviews (a dialogical process) of school aged children when used as an open ended prompt (imagery) in a Forensic Art Therapy Investigative interview (a relational process) as compared to a verbal process.

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