We apply the Colour Family Drawing Test, as a development of the traditional black and white test, for cross-cultural comparison. The participants, aged 7 - 10 years, both genders, were examined individually. Each subject sat at a single table with a white rectangular card of standard size, 24 well-sharpened colour pencils, a black pencil, an eraser and other appropriate tools. S/he received this verbal instruction: “Draw your family”. The procedure was firstly applied to 120 participants attending primary schools of Rome (Biasi, Bonaiuto and Levin, 2014). The families were evaluated through a semi-structural interview conducted with the children’s teachers and divided into: Harmonious versus Very Conflictual Families. The drawings made by children of Harmonious Families consistently used “Reassuring and Playful Colours” (Pink, Orange, Sky Blue, Light Green, Light Yellow, other pastel colours); and were larger, tidier and more proportioned to respect the opposite group. Children belonging to Conflictual Families used mostly “Alarming and Serious Colours” (Grey, Black, Dark Bleu, Violet, Olive Green) and their drawings were less extended, more often disordered and had typical deformations such as figures too thin. A second investigation examined 120 participants belonging to Asian immigrant families residing in Italy. A third investigation examined 120 participants belonging to Russian families of Moscow. Both last two investigations obtained very similar results on the use of colours, and gave a confirmation of the relevance of the Colour Family Drawing Test.
The Family Drawing Test was generally performed with children for the assessment of cognitive and emo- tional development, as indicators of mental health, and for the evaluation of children’s perceptions of family relationships.
Recently, the research is oriented to the analysis of attachment styles in relation to Family Drawing characteristics, also related to main personality traits of parents or caregivers.
Arteche, & Murray [
Goldner and Scharf [
Drawings from children in the ambivalent and disorganized attachment categories reflected the children’s adjustment difficulties; children whose drawings were classified as representing avoidant attachment were found to function relatively well. The study demonstrated the effectiveness of using family drawings to assess children’s attachment representations and to identify children at risk for adjustment problems in the school setting.
Gorman [
Gernhardt, Rübeling and Keller [
Generally, the Family Drawing Test is applied in all this studies in a black and white version and for this reason this procedure has lost, according to us, the possibility to collect very important informations: such as the level of emotional conflict that can be expressed by the use of colours, expecially by children.
In any case, when occasionally authors included the use of colours, they didn’t utilize specific indicators for colour evaluation: such as the emotional quality of the colour and the colour meaning. For this reason our research group introduced some years ago, a classification of indicators of graphic pictorial language linked to conflictual meanings―or harmonious ones―derived from research study on psychology of expressiveness, as we will explain below.
First, confirm that you have the correct template for your paper size. This template has been tailored for output on the custom paper size (21 cm *28.5 cm).The classic “Family Drawing” procedure, as established by Corman (1964) [
On the basis of a series of previous observations conducted by Biasi & Bonaiuto (2005) [
According to this procedure each participant is individually examined, sitting at the table with an A4-format rectangular card (35 × 25 cm), a set of 24 well-sharpened coloured pencils, a black pencil, a black thin tipped felt-tip pen, an eraser and a pencil sharpener. The following instruction is given orally: “Draw your family” (a sentence used also by Appel [
In the first study this new procedure was applied to 120 subjects (both genders), aged 7 - 10 years and living in Rome, belonging to Italian families and attending primary school of the city [
1) Harmonious Families, characterised by supportive parents, who can guarantee affective support, maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations.
2) Very Conflictual Families, characterised by a high degree of parental conflict, expressions of open violence within the family, difficult separation or divorce either underway or imminent [
As regards graphic pictorial language Biasi, Bonaiuto and Levin [
Furthermore, the children of Very Conflictual Families used mainly angular shapes and broken lines instead of rounded shapes and continuous lines, preferred by the children of the opposite category. The drawings of children of Very Conflictual Families were also significantly less accurate, more irregular and deformed, while the drawings of the children belonging to the Harmonious category were more accurate, regular and well shaped and these last dates confirm the previous specific literature [
Note that the graphic abilities are generally represented as normal distribution, so this variables don’t enable the results with quite large sample.
Children belonging to Conflictual Families (
The drawings made by children of Harmonious Families (
The graphic-pictorial test was applied in Rome in a second study, with children of immigrant Families [
The comparisons with the Italian data proved that quite similar graphic-pictorial languages are used, with some minor but interesting and meaningful differences.
Also these families where divided into two groups, on the basis of information given by the teachers throw a semistructured interview: the Harmonious Families versus Very Conflictual ones. Again, children of Very Conflictual Families generally used “Alarming and Serious Colours” in their drawings (
Those of Harmonious Families typically used “Reassuring and Playful Colours” (
The opposite category is again characterized by a high degree of parental conflict, expressions of open violence within the family, difficult separation, extreme poverty, etc.
Drawings of the first type were significantly less accurate, more irregular and deformed, with figure slimness as another typical indicator; those of the opposite category were clearly more accurate and proportionate; and used more space.
The second investigation had very similar results to the previous ones, except for more accuracy shown by Asian children of Harmonious Families.
Another investigation was then planned and performed [
The research procedure remained the same.In the results, the general relations between colours and emotional meanings turned out as in the previous investigations, with some peculiarities.In the drawing of the conflictual group (
The drawings belonging to the harmonious group are frequently represented with reassuring and playful colours (
As we can see in
Moreover, some peculiarities appear: for examples in the Asian sample of Family Drawing we can see more accuracy and particularly attention is devoted to the representation of details.
The phenomenal properties of colours were initially studied by Koffka [
Collected data―from experimental and clinical setting―confirm that, on the whole, the “Alarming and Serious” colours turned out to be violet, grey, black, dark blue and olive green, possibly including red and yellow stripes, while the so-called “Reassuring and Playful” colours were mainly hues of pink as well as orange, sky
Colours | Colours Family Drawings | ||
---|---|---|---|
From Conflictual Family (n = 40) | From Harmonious Family (n = 40) | Nationality | |
Alarming and Serious Colours | 10 (25%) | 1 (2.5%) | Italian Sample |
Playful and Reassuring Colours | 5 (12.5%) | 18 (45%) | |
Alarming and Serious Colours | 12 (30%) | 6 (15%) | Asian Sample Italian Sample |
Playful and Reassuring Colours | 4 (10%) | 16 (40%) | |
Alarming and Serious Colours | 17 (42.5%) | 5 (2.5%) | Russian Sample Italian Sample |
Playful and Reassuring Colours | 3 (7.5%) | 15 (37.5%) |
blue, light green, light yellow and other pastel colours.
Following the Natural Colour System (NCS) [
The “Reassuring and Playful” colours also correspond to specific codes; for example, Orange is 05 85-Y60R. These labels are useful to clearly identify the tonalities.
Moreover, the emotional meaning of these hues is registered and detected by using bipolar scales with contrasting adjectives, such as “Alarming”, “Serious”, Disquieting”, “Reassuring”, “Playful”, etc.
Bonaiuto in 1978 [
This distinction was also confirmed through experimental works dealing the results of so-called procedures of “Stress Drawing” and “Comfort Drawing” [
In other studies carried out by Bonaiuto, Giannini, Biasi, Miceu Romano and Bonaiuto [
Perceptual defence phenomena is linked to the overload of psychological conflict as demonstrated in the classical clinical observations [
On the basis of these observations, we underline important connections between phenomenology and psychodynamics, with the support of experimental confirmations. This approach appears useful for clinical applications, as in the case of the projective test of Colour Family Drawing. Finally, we discovered that the use of disquieting hues is linked to psychological conflict overload that generally arouses psychological defence.
The comparison of the results obtained showed a quite similar distribution of the colours in “Alarming and Serious” versus “Playful and Reassuring” in the three groups of children interviewed (Italian, Asian and Russian), according to the level of family psychological conflict. This frequency percentage are calculated on the basis of 80 drawings for groups (respectively 40 belonging from Very Conflictual Families and 40 from Harmonious Families).
Moreover, some peculiarities appears: for examples in the Asian sample of Family Drawing, we can see more accuracy and particularly attention to the representation of details.
In conclusion, the laws of colour expressiveness reveal considerable overall cross-cultural stability.