Does Children's Colour Use Reflect the Emotional Content of their Drawings?

Infant and Child DevelopmentInf. Child Dev. 21: 198–215 (2012)Published online 8 August 2011 in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.742

Does Children’s Colour Use Reflectthe Emotional Content of theirDrawings?

*CorrespondenBox 56, Dune

Copyright © 201

Emily Crawforda, Julien Grossa, Tess Pattersonb

and Harlene Haynea,*aDepartment of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New ZealandbDepartment of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, NewZealand

When children draw in clinical contexts, clinicians sometimes relyon children’s colour use to make inferences about their emotionalreaction to the subject of the drawing. Here, we examined whetherchildren use colour to portray emotion in their drawings. In Ex-periment 1, children indicated their colour preferences and thencoloured in outlines of figures characterized as nasty or nice. Chil-dren also drew complex, multi-coloured pictures about their ownhappy or sad experiences. In Experiment 2, hospitalized childrendrew about being worried or scared in hospital and about theirpositive experiences. In both experiments, we examined the rela-tion between children’s colour use and their colour preferences.Three- to 10-year-old children used more preferred colours tocolour in the nice outline. Although they were more likely to usenon-preferred colours to colour in the nasty outline, they tendedto used a mix of preferred and non-preferred colours. When bothnormal and hospitalized children produced drawings about posi-tive and negative events, there was no relation between children’scolour choices and their colour preferences; children primarilyused preferred colours. These data suggest that clinicians shouldexercise extreme caution when interpreting the meaning of colourin children’s drawings. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: children; drawing; colour; emotion

ce to: Harlene Hayne, Department of Psychology, University of Otago, POdin 9054, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]

1 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Children’s Colour Use in Drawings 199

Producing art is a pervasive part of childhood in most western cultures. Althoughchildren draw primarily for pleasure, in clinical and forensic contexts, adults oftenask children to produce drawings as a means of gaining information about theirexperiences or emotions. Sometimes drawing is used to facilitate children’s abilityto talk about their experiences, thoughts, or feelings, and sometimes drawing isused as a projective measure of children’s intelligence, psychological well-being,or abuse status. Although drawing tasks routinely rank among the most popularinstruments used by professionals who work with children, the critical questionis whether drawing actually facilitates children’s communication or yields a non-verbal, projective index of psychologically-relevant characteristics.

When drawings are used to facilitate communication, children are given draw-ing materials and are allowed to draw while they are answering questions. Used inthis way, the emphasis is on what a child says, rather than what he or she draws.Although clinicians’ use of drawing to facilitate communication preceded empir-ical validation, a small but growing body of research has now shown that drawingincreases the amount of information that children report during a structured inter-view. Using best-practice interview conditions that involve only general, open-ended questions, children as young as 3 to 4years (Butler et al., 1995) and as oldas 12 years (Patterson & Hayne, 2011) have been shown to report approximatelytwice as much information if they are given the opportunity to draw while talking(Butler et al., 1995; Gross & Hayne, 1998, 1999; Wesson & Salmon, 2001). Import-antly, the increase in the amount of information that children report does not occurat the expense of accuracy; the accounts provided by children who draw whiletalking are as accurate as the accounts provided by children who talk withoutdrawing materials.

When drawings are used as projective measures of psychological functioning,the interviewer typically asks the child to produce a drawing and then the inter-viewer interprets the meaning of what the child has drawn. Used in this way, theemphasis is on what the child draws, rather than on what he or she says; in fact,the drawing is typically interpreted without further input from the child. The clin-ician’s interpretation of the drawing is based on assumptions about the meaning ofthe colour, form, size, and placement of objects on the page (e.g., Hammer, 1997;Malchiodi, 1998; Oppawsky, 1991; Oster & Crone, 2004; Sourkes, 1991; Tayloret al., 1998). Projective drawing tests are among the top 10 most frequently usedpsychological assessment measures (Camara et al., 2000; Chan & Lee, 1995;Sharpley & Pain, 1988; Watkins et al., 1995). Although formal projective drawingmeasures are less common in Britain than in the US (Bekhit et al., 2005; Bekhitet al., 2002), the majority of psychologists who work with children in Britain usedrawing informally (Bekhit et al., 2005). Other research has shown that the infor-mal use of drawing often includes projective interpretation of what the child hasdrawn (e.g., DiLeo, 1983; Furth, 1988; Golomb, 2004; Malchiodi, 1998).

Given the prevalence of projective drawing, is there any evidence that the draw-ings can be reliably interpreted to yield valid information about a child’sintelligence, psychological wellbeing, or personality? In some projective drawingtests, children are given explicit instructions about what to draw. For example, inthe Draw-A-Person test [DAP] (Naglieri, 1988), the Kinetic Family Drawings test[KFD] (Burns & Kaufman, 1970), and the House-Tree-Person test [HTP] (Buck,1970), children are asked to draw a specific figure or set of figures. Their drawingis then scored on the basis of the quality, size, shape, spacing, and location of thespecific details. These tests generally have adequate reliability (for review, seeLilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2000), but their validity is more circumspect. Much ofthe validation research in this area has been plagued with problems in

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 21: 198–215 (2012)DOI: 10.1002/icd

200 E. Crawford et al.

methodology, analyses, and interpretation (e.g., Dykens, 1996; Naglieri, 1988;Naglieri et al., 1991; Prewett et al., 1989; Reynolds & Hickman, 2004) and the mostrigorous research on these tests has mounted a serious challenge to the claim thatthey yield any indication of a child’s IQ, personality, or psychopathology (Abellet al., 1996; Finch & Belter, 1993; Gresham, 1993; Gulbro-Leavitt & Schimmel,1991; Lilienfeld et al., 2000; Motta et al., 1993; Wakefield & Underwager, 1998;Willcock et al., 2011).

In other projective drawing tests, children are given less explicit instructionsabout what to draw. In these tests, children are allowed to produce a drawing oftheir choice, or of a general topic. The clinician then interprets the meaning of spe-cific features that are contained within the drawing; colour use is a common fea-ture that is used to make psychological inferences about the child. Rorschach(1942) was one of the first researchers to argue that emotion and colour werelinked; this notion is inherent in his projective ink-blot assessment system. Consist-ent with Rorschach’s view, more contemporary clinicians and researchers havealso assumed that the colours that children use when they draw reflect the emo-tions associated with the drawing topic.

For example, children’s colour choices have been used as evidence for trauma(Gregorian et al., 1996), depression (Howe et al., 1987), fear or anxiety (Mumcuoglu,1991), and other emotional difficulties (Milne & Greenway, 1999). Colour use hasalso been used to assess the quality of children’s relationships with their parents,their attachment styles (Fihrer & McMahon, 2009; Fury et al., 1997; Leon et al.,2007; Madigan et al., 2003), and children’s level of adjustment to school (McDo-nald, 2009). Colour use has been used in medical settings to draw inferences aboutchildren’s emotional and physical experiences (e.g., pain) during hospitalisation(Clatworthy et al., 1999; Pelander et al., 2007; Slusarska et al., 2004; Unrah et al.,1983). Furthermore, colour use has been used as an indicator of personality andpsychopathology in standardized projective psychological measures (e.g., FamilyDrawing Rating Scale, Fury et al., 1997; House-Tree-Person test, Buck, 1970).

Unfortunately, like many other ways in which drawing has been used in clinicalsettings, there has been little attempt to experimentally validate the claim thatcolour use provides an indication of psychological functioning. Over the pastfew years, however, Burkitt and her colleagues have begun to systematically in-vestigate the use of colour in children’s drawings. For example, Burkitt et al.(2003) compared the colours that children used when colouring in drawings ofemotional significance under highly-controlled experimental conditions. In theirstudy, 330 4- to 11-year-old children coloured in pre-drawn outlines of a man, atree, or a dog. Children were first asked to colour in the outline of a neutrally-characterized shape, then to choose one colour per picture to colour in two moreoutlines; one was positively characterized as “nice,” the other was negatively char-acterized as “nasty.” Children’s colour preferences were also assessed. Overall,children used more preferred colours for the positively-characterized drawings,less preferred colours for the negatively-characterized drawings, and colours thatthey ranked in the middle for the neutral drawings (see also, Burkitt et al., 2007).

Burkitt et al.’s (2003) original colouring-in task was specifically designed toeliminate the potentially interfering effects of planning and production in the con-struction of a drawing, providing children the opportunity to focus primarily ontheir colour choice. When children are asked to draw in clinical contexts, however,planning and production are integral parts of the drawing process. Given this,Burkitt et al. (2004) examined whether children’s colour preferences were relatedto their colour choiceswhen theywere asked to draw emotionally-significant figures.In the Burkitt et al. (2004) study, children produced emotionally-characterized



outlines in lead pencil, and then coloured them in using a single colour. Again,when the children produced simple figure drawings, they used their favorite col-ours for positively-characterized drawings, their least favorite colours for nega-tively-characterized drawings, and colours rated in the middle for neutraldrawings.

Taken together, the Burkitt et al. (2003, 2004) studies have provided some evi-dence that colour choice is related to the emotional valence of a drawing but, asBurkitt et al. acknowledge, their data were obtained under highly prescribed cir-cumstances. In clinical contexts, children are typically allowed to produce complexdrawings about real-life emotional events that have personal significance. In thesecontexts, children often use multiple colours to produce a drawing and theircolour choices are presumably influenced by a number of factors that may ormay not include the emotional valence of the experience about which they aredrawing. For example, children’s drawing skill may affect their colour choiceswhen they are asked to produce a picture. The development of children’s drawingskill follows a remarkably consistent pattern, with boys tending to lag behind girlsin both participation and drawing skill (Gardner, 1980; Golomb, 2004; Lowenfeld& Brittain, 1987; Malchiodi, 1998). Children initially begin to scribble at around18months old, and begin to draw meaningful, representational pictures at ap-proximately 3- to 4-years old; by the age of 5- to 6-years, normally developing chil-dren typically draw representational pictures (Golomb, 2004; Lowenfeld &Brittain, 1987; Malchiodi, 1998). In the early stages of drawing development, chil-dren do not use colour to deliberately represent objects, often drawing using a sin-gle colour (Golomb & Farmer, 1983; Malchiodi, 1998). By the age of 4, however,they use multiple colours to draw and demonstrate the beginnings of conventionalcolour use, for example drawing yellow suns and green grass (Golomb, 2004;Thomas & Silk, 1990). By approximately 9-years of age, children focus predomin-antly on realism, attempting to use artistic techniques such as depth, proportion,size, and colour to draw as realistically as possible (Malchiodi, 1998; Trautner,2008). The majority of children reach the end of their drawing development by9- or 10-years-old (Golomb, 2004; Malchiodi, 1998).

On one hand, some experts have argued that older children (and therefore morehighly skilled children) may be more likely to use colour to portray emotion intheir drawings (Jolley et al., 2004); this argument is based primarily on the fact thatmore advanced artists (e.g., adult artists) often use specific features like colour todisplay meaning in their art. On the other hand, experts have argued that becauseolder children are more likely to portray objects in their canonical colour (Golomb,2004; Thomas & Silk, 1990), younger children, who are not constrained by realism,may be more likely to use colour to portray emotion (Davis, 1997).

With the development of children’s drawing skill in mind, the overarchinggoal of the present research was to assess the relation between children’scolour choice and the emotional content of their drawings. The specific aimsof the research were three-fold: First, we attempted to replicate the findings previ-ously obtained by Burkitt et al. using their single-colour colouring-in task. Second,we examined the relation between children’s colour preferences and their colouruse in a productive drawing task more similar to drawing tasks that are used in clin-ical settings. In this task, children were asked to draw about self-nominated personalexperiences that were associated with positive and negative emotions. Finally, weexamined the relation between colour preferences and colour use in a sample of chil-dren who had experienced clinical levels of distress due to hospitalization. These chil-dren were asked to draw about both positive and negative experiences that wereassociated with being in hospital.



EXPERIMENT 1

Method

ParticipantsTwenty 3- to 4-year-olds (10 male and 10 female; mean age=4.10years, SD=.51),

20 5- and 6-year-olds (10 male and 10 female; mean age=5.96years, SD=.50), and20 9- and 10-year-olds (10 male and 10 female; mean age=9.9years, SD=.29) wererecruited from a university preschool in a small city and a primary school in asmall town. The children were predominantly of European descent and came frommiddle-income socioeconomic backgrounds. All children had written parentalconsent to participate. One additional child was not included in the final samplebecause he was unwilling to participate in some of the drawing activities.

ProcedureEach child was interviewed individually by a female experimenter in a room

adjacent to the classroom. To establish rapport, the interview began with the experi-menter chatting with the child about his or her pets, family, or activities at school.When the child appeared comfortable, the experimenter began the interview.

Colour preferencesFirst, children’s colour preferences were assessed using a task originally devel-

oped by Burkitt et al. (2003). In our version of the task, a picture of a smiley facewas placed on one side of the table, and a picture of a sad face was placed onthe other. Ten individual laminated colour cards (15 � 12cm), representing the10 colours of the crayons available to the child for colouring (red, orange, yellow,green, blue, purple, pink, white, brown, and black), were placed in front of thechild in a randomized order. Children were asked to sort the colours into the col-ours that they liked and the colours that they did not like. The experimenter said,“I’ve got all of these colours here and what I want you to do is to have a good lookat them and decide which colours you really like and which colours you don’t like.Beside the smiley face (the experimenter pointed to the smiley face), I want you toput all the colours that you really, really like. Beside the sad face (the experimenterpointed to the sad face), I want you to put all the colours that you really, reallyhate.” Sometimes the child required additional prompting. For example, if thechild failed to sort all of the colours, the experimenter would randomly point toone and say, “Where does this colour go?” If a child failed to place a colour inone of the piles, but pointed to a card and said “I like/hate that colour,” the experi-menter placed the card in the appropriate pile on the basis of the child’s verbalresponse.

In addition to asking the children to sort their colours into preferred andnon-preferred piles, the 5- to 10-year-old children were also asked to rankthe colours within each of their preferred and non-preferred piles. The 3- to4-year-olds in our experiment were not asked to complete the ranking task becausepilot research had indicated that preschoolers were unable to rank their colour prefer-ences consistently. For the ranking task, the experimenter spread the colours that thechild had placed in their preferred pile out in front of the child and asked, “Out of allof the colours that you really like, which colour is your absolute favorite?”When thechild indicated their favorite colour, the experimenter placed the colour to the far leftof the child. The experimenter then asked the child to identify which was his or hernext favorite colour, and placed this colour beside (on the right of) the favorite colour.



The experimenter continued to ask the childwhich colourwas his or her next favorite,and placed each colour in order beside the higher ranked colour, until all of the coloursfrom the preferred pile were chosen.

Next, the experimenter spread the child’s non-preferred colours out below thepreferred colours. The experimenter said, “Out of all of the colours that you reallydon’t like, which colour is your absolute worst?” When the child indicated theirleast preferred colour, the experiment placed it to the far left of the child, belowthe child’s absolute favorite colour. The experimenter then asked the child to identifyhis or her next worst colour, and placed this colour beside the absolute worst colour.The experimenter continued to ask the child which colour was his or her next worst,placing each colour in order beside the lower ranked colour, until all of the coloursfrom the non-preferred pile were chosen. The experimenter completed the rankingtask by checking that the order of most preferred to least preferred colours was cor-rect. The experimenter pointed to the colours and said, “So, this is your absolute fa-vorite colour, next favorite, next favorite and so on, and this is your absolute worstcolour, next worse, next worse, and so on. Is that right?”

Colour-in taskSecond, all children were asked to colour in two line drawings of a man. Based

on the procedure used by Burkitt et al. (2003), each child was given a black outlineof a man (with a height of 21cm and a maximum width of 10cm, see Figure 1) thathad been drawn on a sheet of A4 white paper. Each child was also given a packetof 10 Jovi crayons matching the colours of the previously-presented colour cards.On one trial, the child was given the following instructions: “What I want you todo is think of a man who is a very kind, nice man, and who is very pleasant and

Figure 1. A scaled, colored-in example of the outline of the nice or nasty man that we usedfor the color-in task in Experiments 1 and 2.



friendly to everyone. Thinking about what a nice, kind man this is, I want you topick just one of these colours to colour him in. Colour him in as well as youcan.” On the other trial, the child was given the following instructions: “Nowhere’s another picture of a man. What I want you to do this time is to think of aman who is a very nasty, horrible man who is very mean and unfriendly to every-one. Thinking about what a mean, nasty man he is, I want you to pick just one ofthese colours to colour him in. Colour him in as well as you can.” Each picture wasremoved and a fresh outline drawing of a manwas presented before the next colour-ing instructions were given. The order of presentation of the positive and negativedescription of the man was counterbalanced across children.

Production taskFinally, each childwas asked to provide a narrative account of two personal, emo-

tional experiences: the childwas asked to describe an event that made him or her feelhappy and an event that made him or her feel sad. The experimenter started by ask-ing each child the following question: “Can you think of a time when you felt really,really happy [or sad]?”Once the child indicated that he or she could think of a time,the experimenter gave the child the 10 crayons again and a piece of white construc-tion paper (42� 29cm), and asked him or her to draw about the timewhen he or shewas happy or sad, in as much detail as possible. Previous research has indicated that3- to 6-year-old children spontaneously narrate as they draw (Butler et al., 1995;Gross & Hayne, 1998), but if the child did not describe his or her drawing, he orshe was asked to do so. The experimenter maintained the conversational flow bysaying “uh huh,” “cool,” or by repeating a portion of the child’s previous utter-ance. The only additional prompt provided by the experimenter was, “Can youdrawme anything else about the time you felt really, really happy [or sad]?” If a childindicated that he or she was unable to think of a time that he or she had felt happy orsad, the experimenter asked the child to think of an event involving the next emotion.Once the child had finished describing that event, the experimenter returned to theemotion that the child was unable to describe earlier, and repeated the questionagain. The order in which the children were asked about each emotional experiencewas counterbalanced. Overall, the interview lasted approximately 20–30 minutes.Each child was thanked for his or her participation and was given a small gift.

Clinician ratingsTo provide an objective measure of whether children had nominated appropri-

ate emotional experiences to draw and discuss, we asked 10 clinical psychologiststo rate the emotional intensity of the children’s experiences. The clinicians wereprovided with the child’s nominated emotional experience and age for both thehappy and sad events. The clinicians rated the children’s experiences for strengthof emotion on a 10-point likert scale, based on Stallard (2002). On this scale, a scoreof 10 represented “exceptionally strong,” 8 represented “pretty strong,” 7 repre-sented “fairly strong,” 5 represented “medium,” 4 represented “fairly weak,” 3represented “pretty weak,” and 1 represented “very weak.” If clinicians did notthink that a child described an emotionally appropriate event (e.g., the child didnot describe a sad event when asked to), the child’s event was given a rating of 1.

CodingAll of the interviews were video- and audio-recorded. Children’s colour use in

the colouring-in task was scored relative to their colour preferences. We counted



the number of children who used a colour from their preferred (liked) pile tocolour in the nasty or niceman, and the number of children who used a colour fromtheir non-preferred (disliked) pile to colour in the nasty or nice man. In addition,given that the 5- to 10-year-olds were able to rank their colour preferences, weused an interval coding scheme to record the absolute rank of the colour that theolder children used to colour in the nice and the nasty drawing; according to thiscoding scheme, the most preferred colours had the lowest rank.

For all ages, to code children’s colour use in the production task, the absolutenumber of colours that each child used from his or her preferred pile to drawabout the happy or the sad event was converted to a ratio of the total number ofcolours that the child used in that drawing. For example, if a child used 5 coloursin total to draw his or her happy drawing and 3 of those colours came from hispreferred pile, the child would receive a ratio score of .60 (3/5). According to thiscoding scheme, a child who used only preferred colours would receive a ratioscore of 1.00.

Results

Colour-in taskThe first step in our analysis was to determine whether children used preferred

colours to colour in the nice man, and non-preferred colours to colour in the nastyman. Children of all ages were more likely to use a preferred colour to colour in thenice drawing, than they were to use a preferred colour to colour in the nasty draw-ing (Fishers exact test, largest p< .01). Although the majority of children used pre-ferred colours to colour in the nice figure (80% of 3- to 4-year-olds and 95% of 5- to10-year-olds), children chose a mixture of preferred and non-preferred colours tocolour in the nasty man; between 40 and 65% of children used a preferred colourto colour-in the nasty man (40% of 3- to 4-year-olds, 65% of 5- to 6-year-olds, and45% of 9- to 10-year-olds).

Recall that the older children were also asked to rank the colours from theirmost preferred colour (1) to their least preferred colour (10) (consistent withBurkitt et al., 2003). Given this, for the 5- to 10-year-old children, we were notrestricted to a single dichotomous distinction between preferred and non-preferredcolours but rather could assess potentially more subtle differences in the relationbetween emotion and colour choice. In the next analysis, the specific rank of thecolours that 5- to 10-year-old children used to colour in the nice or the nasty draw-ing was submitted to a 2 (Gender) X 2 (Age) X 2 (Emotion: nice, nasty) analysis ofvariance (ANOVA) with repeated measures over emotion.

This analysis revealed significant main effects of emotion, F(1, 36)=61.89, p< .01,�p2= .63, and gender, F(1, 36) = 31.35, p< .01, �p

2= .47, and a significant Gender XEmotion interaction, F(1, 36) = 10.32, p< .01, �p

2= .22. To evaluate the interaction,we conducted t-tests across gender for each emotion. Males and females did notdiffer in the rank of the colour that they used to colour in the nice man (Males:M= 2.60, SE = .42; Females: M = 3.30, SE = .49), t(38) = 1.09, ns, d= .34, power = .54;children of both genders used a preferred colour to colour in the nice man (100%of females and 90% of males). For the nasty man, on the other hand, females useda less preferred colour more often (M = 9.25, SE = .25) than did males (M = 5.10,SE = .67), t(38) = 5.79, p< .01, d = 1.82. In fact, although 95% of the girls selected acolour from their non-preferred pile to colour in the nasty man, only 30% of theboys did so—70% of the boys used a colour from their preferred pile to colour inthis drawing. The effect of age was not significant, F(1, 36) = .27, ns, �p

2< .05,power = .37, and there were no other interactions.


Table 1. The ratio of preferred colors that children used in Experiments 1 and 2 to producetheir drawings

Happy Sad

Experiment 13- and 4-year-olds .63 (.09) .79 (.08)5-and 6-year-olds .70 (.08) .84 (.04)9- and 10-year-olds .65 (.08) .68 (.07)

Positive Worried/Nervous

Experiment 2Hospitalized Children .67 (.05) .67 (.06)


Production taskThe first step in our analysis of the production task was to compare the overall

ratio of preferred colours that children used to draw the happy drawing to the over-all ratio of preferred colours that children used to draw the sad drawing. The ratiodata were submitted to a 2 (Gender) X 3 (Age) X 2 (Emotion: happy, sad) ANOVAwith repeated measures over emotion. This analysis revealed no significant main ef-fect of emotion, F(1, 54) = 2.94, ns, �p

2 = .05, power = .42. Children used a similarratio of preferred colours to draw their happy drawing (M=.66,SE=.05) as theyused to draw their sad drawing (M= .77, SE = .04). There were no significant maineffects of gender, F(1, 54) = .1.99, ns, �p

2 = .04, power=.34, or age, F(2, 54) = 1.14, ns,�p2 = .04, power = .26, and no significant interactions. Table 1 shows that, in general,

across age and emotion, children predominantly used their preferred colours.

Intensity of emotional experiencesRecall that 10 clinical psychologists rated the emotional intensity of each child’s

happy and sad experience.1 Overall, children’s experiences were rated as emotion-ally appropriate; according to the clinicians, children described happy events andsad events when they were asked to do so. The clinician’s ratings for children’shappy and sad experiences were submitted to a 3 (Age) X 2 (Emotion: happy orsad) ANOVAwith repeated measures over emotion. Although all of the emotionalexperiences were rated as moderately to strongly intense, the 9- and 10-year-olds’emotional experienceswere rated asmore intense (M=7.91, SE= .17, “pretty strong”)than were the 5- and 6-year-olds’ emotional experiences (M=6.56, SE=.27, “fairlystrong”), or the 3- to 4-year-old children’s experiences (M=5.49, SE= .36,“medium”), F(2, 53)=17.89, p< .01, �p

2< .40, smallest t(36)=4.36, p< .01, d=.73.There was no difference in the intensity of the ratings assigned to the children’shappy events (M=6.64, SE= .25) compared to their sad events (M=6.49, SE= .25),F(1, 53)= .08, ns, �p

2< .01, power= .12, and there was no interaction. There was alsono relation between the rated intensity of the children’s emotional experiences andtheir ratio scores on the production task, largest r=�.14, ns; children who drewabout more intense happy or sad emotional experiences were no more likely tovary their use of colour preferences to portray emotion in their drawings than chil-dren who drew about less intense happy or sad emotional experiences.

Specific colour analysisSo far we have conducted analyses to determine whether children used their

personal colour preferences to colour in and to draw pictures of positive and nega-tive emotional significance. Children used preferred colours to colour in the nice



man, and a mix of preferred and non-preferred colours to colour-in the nasty man.For the production task, irrespective of their age, gender, or the emotional charac-teristics of the drawing, children’s primary strategy was to use preferred colours.In fact, of the colours that children used for their sad drawings, 77% were coloursfrom their preferred pile. Some practitioners have argued, however, that specificcolours can represent global meaning in drawings. For example, Furth (1988) hasargued that red symbolizes strong emotions, black indicates negativity, and purpleindicates need for control or support.

To determine whether there was a relation between children’s use of specific col-ours and the emotional content of their drawings, we counted the number of childrenwho used each specific colour to colour in the nice and nasty drawings, and to drawabout the happy and sad events. We then conducted a series of chi-square analysesto determine whether children’s colour use differed from the performance that wewould expect by chance, using Yates’ correction where appropriate.2 When chil-dren coloured in the nice and nasty man, their pattern of specific colour-use variedsignificantly compared to chance (nice: w2 (8)=29.02, p< .01, V2= .49; nasty: w2 (8)=62.90, p< .01, V2=1.08). Furthermore, children’s patterns of colour use differed forthe nice man compared to the nasty man, w2 (8)=42.91, p< .01, V2= .37. Table 2shows that the colours that children most frequently chose to colour in the niceman were red, blue, and yellow. In contrast, to colour-in the nasty man, childrenchose black most frequently, followed by brown. These patterns of specific colouruse in the colouring task are highly consistent with Burkitt et al.’s (2003) findings.

In contrast to the colouring-in task, Table 2 shows that when children drew morecomplex pictures about happy and sad experiences, their colour use did not vary sys-tematically as a function of emotion (w2 (9)=1.48, p=ns, V2= .004,power= .17), butoverall, children used purple and white less than others colours (Sad: w2 (9)=22.87, p=< .01, V2= .08; Happy: w (9)=17.76, p=< .05, V2= .08). There were no dif-ferences in the total number of colours that children used to produce their happydrawings compared to their sad drawings (M=3.62, SE= .28), t(117)= .72, p=ns,d= .13, power= .25.

EXPERIMENT 2

Taken together, the results of Experiment 1 showed that when non-clinical samplesof children draw about self-nominated emotional experiences, they do not usecolour to portray emotion. Although the events that children described were rated

Table 2. Colors chosen by children to color in outlines characterized as nasty and nice, andto draw pictures about happy and sad events, and experiences that made them happy orfeel better or worried or scared in hospital

Red Blue Yellow Orange Green Pink Purple Black Brown White

Experiment 1: 3- to 10-year-olds (n=60)Nice 13 11 13 2 7 2 6 2 0 1Nasty 2 5 3 8 3 1 1 23 12 1Happy 23 26 23 26 25 16 23 28 27 6Sad 22 25 20 20 21 12 16 29 23 5Experiment 2: Hospitalized children (n=17)Happy 12 11 8 9 8 9 7 14 12 5Feel Better 8 8 7 6 9 6 5 9 10 3Worried/Scared 4 2 4 3 3 2 4 6 3 2



by clinical psychologists as “fairly to pretty strong” in intensity, it is possible thatchildren who have experienced even more emotionally-intense events may bemore likely to use colour to reflect the emotional content of their drawing.

In Experiment 2, we conducted an exploratory study of colour use by childrenwho had experienced clinically significant distress; the children in Experiment 2had been hospitalized briefly for an illness or an injury. Hospitalization is commonlyaccepted as a significantly stressful event for children. Health professionals haveused projective drawings to assess the effects of hospitalization on children’s well-being (e.g., Bellack & Fleming, 1996; Clatworthy et al., 1999; Kortesluoma et al.,2008; Stefanatou, 2008; Unrah et al., 1983), and colour use is one aspect of children’sdrawings that has been used to infer distress in hospital settings (Clatworthy et al.,1999; Pelander, et al., 2007; Slusarska et al., 2004; Unrah et al., 1983). Because ofthe exploratory nature of our investigation, we specifically avoided a populationof children who had been abused, or who were chronically ill. We reasoned thatchildren who had been hospitalized briefly were likely to have experienced clinic-ally-significant emotional distress, but would not be embarrassed or reluctant totalk about their experiences.

Method

ParticipantsSeventeen 6- to 12-year-olds (10 female and 7 male; mean age=8.28years, SD=

1.91) were recruited through schools and hospitals in a small city. Children whoparticipated in the experiment had been admitted to hospital for a minimum ofone night for an injury or illness that was assumed to cause moderate levels of dis-tress, including serious infection, accident trauma, broken bones, tonsillectomy,pain, asthma complications, and epilepsy. Twelve of the children had been admit-ted to hospital previously on one or more occasions but were not considered to bechronically ill. The children were predominantly of European descent and camefrom a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. All children had written parentalconsent to participate and provided their verbal assent.

InterviewExperiment 2 was conducted as part of a larger study on children’s experience

of hospitalization. Prior research has demonstrated that children remember largeamounts of accurate information about their prior experiences following delaysof up to 1year (e.g., Gross & Hayne, 1999). Children were therefore interviewed in-dividually within 12months of their hospitalization. The average delay betweenthe children’s hospitalization experience and the interview was 5.3months(159.81days, SE=27.7days), and ranged from 1day to 11months. Children wereinterviewed either in a room at their school or at home. Most of the children wereinterviewed without their parents present; a few parents attended the interview,but did not contribute to the conversation.

During the interview, each child was asked to draw and describe an experiencethat had worried or scared them in hospital, and an experience that had madethem feel better in hospital. The order in which children were asked to draw anddescribe their experiences was counterbalanced across participants. To ensure thatchildren finished the interview on a positive note, each child was then asked todraw and describe a happy experience (the interviewer suggested that a birthdaymay be an example of a happy experience). Each child was thanked for his or herparticipation and was given a small gift.



CodingAll of the interviews were video- and audio-recorded and were coded using the

same procedures that were used in Experiment 1.

ResultsPreliminary analyses indicated that there were no significant differences between

children’s colour-use ratio scores in drawings about happy events compared to draw-ings about experiences that made children feel better in hospital.3 We therefore col-lapsed children’s scores across the feel better and happy drawings to create thecategory of positive drawings.

Again, we compared the overall ratio of preferred colours that children used todraw the positive drawings to the overall ratio of preferred colours that childrenused to draw the worried/scared drawings. To do this, we conducted a series oft-tests (p< .05). As shown in Table 1, there was no difference in the ratio of preferredcolours that children used to draw their positive drawings (M= .67,SE= .05)or their worried/scared drawings (M=.67, SE= .06), t(18)= .02, ns, d=<.01,power= .10. Table 1 (bottom) shows that, overall, children’s primary strategywas to use preferred colours; for both the positive and the worried/scared draw-ings, a third (67%) of the colours that children used were preferred.

Children’s colour use patterns did not vary significantly compared to chance(Worried: w2 (9)=4.27, p=ns, V2= .13, power= .10, Happy: w2 (9)=7, p=ns,V2= .07,power= .10; Feel Better: w2 (9)=5.76, p=ns, V2= .08, power= .06), and did not varysystematically as a function of emotion (w2 (9)=1.64, p=ns, V2= .004, power= .13).Overall, children used more colours to complete their happy drawings than theydid to complete their worried/scared drawings, t(23)=2.13, p< .05, d= .81. Therewere no further differences in the number of colours that children used as a func-tion of drawing topic, largest t(22)=1.20, p=ns, d= .19, power= .08.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The overarching goal of the present research was to assess the relation betweenchildren’s colour choices and the emotional content of their drawings. Consistentwith Burkitt’s earlier research, the 3- to 10-year-old children in our study used pre-ferred colours to colour in the nice outline drawing. Less consistent with Burkittet al.’s research, the children in our experiment used a mix of preferred and lesspreferred colours to colour in the nasty outline drawing, and for the older children,this pattern of colour use differed for boys and girls. Although 5- to 10-year-oldchildren consistently used a higher-ranked colour to colour in the nice outlinedrawing, girls used lower-ranked colours to colour in the nasty outline drawingthan did boys.

In addition to the colouring-in task, children drew about personally-significantevents that were associated with positive and negative emotions. Both the pre-schoolers and the older children primarily used preferred colours regardless ofthe emotional content of the event depicted in the drawing. Similar to the childrenwho described everyday experiences in Experiment 1, the children in Experiment 2who had been hospitalized primarily used preferred colours regardless of the emo-tional content of the event depicted in the drawing. Given that the hospital datawere exploratory, our conclusions are somewhat limited by the small sample sizeand by our inability to directly compare the children in Experiments 1 and 2. Des-pite these limitations, however, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 are highly



consistent; regardless of the emotional topic about which children drew, they werebiased to use their preferred colours.

One factor that may have contributed to the finding that children used morepreferred colours is that, overall, children demonstrated a bias to have more pre-ferred (60%) than non-preferred (40%) colours. Thus, regardless of other factors in-fluencing children’s colour choice, children were more likely to choose a preferredcolour on the basis of chance alone. Be that as it may, this same issue is likely toarise in clinical contexts as well. If children generally like more colours than theydislike, this same bias will influence the likelihood that they will use preferred col-ours, providing further evidence that the relation between colour preference andcolour use is likely to be of limited value in making decisions about a child in aclinical context.

Another possible explanation for our failure to find a consistent relation be-tween colour choice and the emotional content of children’s drawings might bethat children failed to nominate emotionally-appropriate experiences to depict intheir drawings. We consider this possibility unlikely. In our first experiment, clin-ical psychologists rated the children’s self-nominated events as reflecting moderateto strong emotional experiences. Overall, children of all ages nominated eventsthat were appropriate to the emotion that they were asked to describe, and olderchildren’s events were rated as more emotionally intense than the events of theyounger children. With respect to sad events, for example, older children nomi-nated events that involved the loss of a loved one (e.g., the death of a parent,grandparent, or a pet) and ostracism or social rejection. Younger children, on theother hand, nominated sad events that involved the loss of objects, punishment,being physically hurt, and fears. Importantly, despite the non-clinical nature of thissample, the events that they described are representative of some of the experi-ences that clinical populations of children present with in therapy (e.g., adjustmentdifficulties, phobias). Furthermore, when we interviewed children about an eventthat is known to be stressful (hospitalization), children demonstrated the same pat-tern of colour use in their drawings as did the children who described negativeevents that occurred in the course of their own daily lives. Taken together, thesedata suggest that it is highly unlikely that our failure to find a relation betweencolour use and emotion in children’s drawings was due to the fact that the eventsthat children described lacked emotional intensity.

Another possible explanation for our failure to find a consistent relation be-tween colour choice and the emotional content of children’s drawings might bethat children did not re-experience the target emotions when they were drawingabout the event during the interview. From this perspective, children’s frequentuse of preferred colours may have reflected their positive emotional state at thetime of the drawing interview rather than their emotional state at the time of theevent per se. This same issue, however, is likely to arise in clinical contexts whenchildren are asked to recall past experiences. When addressing difficult pastexperiences, a skilled clinician will take care to develop rapport with a child andwill make every attempt to help that child feel comfortable, in essence bufferingthe child from the emotion associated with the event under discussion.

A final explanation for our failure to find a consistent relation between colourchoice and emotion in children’s drawings could be that there was low powerassociated with our results. In Experiment 1, our sample size (n=60, 20 per agegroup) was chosen because past research has demonstrated that significant draw-ing effects are obtained with sample sizes of 20 (and cell sizes as low as 10; e.g.,Gross & Hayne, 1998). Given that we revealed significant relations between colourpreferences and colour use in the colouring-in task, it is likely that our sample size



was sufficient to detect significant differences in other tasks. It is possible that,with a larger sample size, we might find small, overall differences in children’suse of colour, but from a clinical perspective, if there was no discernable evidencefor the selective colour use in the emotion drawings of 60 children (Experiment 1),it is highly unlikely that a clinician would be able to accurately infer meaning froma specific child’s (n=1) use of colour.

In the colouring-in task, children were more likely to use red, blue, and yellowto colour-in the nice man, and black and brown to colour-in the nasty man. Thesepatterns of colour use are highly consistent with Burkitt et al. (2003). Even in thiscircumscribed colouring-in task, however, no single colour was chosen by morethan 58% of children for a particular emotion. Furthermore, when it came to therealistic production task, across both normal and hospitalized children, children’suse of specific colours did not vary systematically as a function of emotion. Takentogether, our findings about specific colour use suggest that any emotional associa-tions that children might have with a particular colour are idiosyncratic, and arenot consistent across children. Given that many factors are likely to play a rolein children’s perceptions of and associations with colour, including cultural influ-ences, and learned experiences (Davidoff, 1991; Davidoff et al., 1999), it is difficultto see how a clinician could ever make a priori assumptions about any potentialcolour/emotion associations for a specific child.

One remaining question is whether the results of our experiments wouldgeneralize to children who have experienced more severe trauma or psychologicaldistress. These children are likely to have experienced extremely negative experi-ences (e.g. abuse, neglect) relative to the children we interviewed here. Althoughit is still possible that severely distressed children would be more likely to usecolour to reflect negative emotions about the events depicted in their drawings,in the present study, we failed to find any evidence for an association betweenemotional intensity and colour use. Furthermore, given that the children in ourstudy also provided a coherent narrative account of their experience, it is hard tosee what additional information (if any) could be gleaned from the colours theyuse in their drawings.

In our view, the most likely explanation for why colour use is not related to theemotional content of the drawing is children are most likely to use colours that re-flect the canonical colour of the objects that they are trying to represent. A largebody of research has shown that, as children’s drawing skills improve, they attemptto produce more realistic representations which, in turn, influences their decisionsabout colour choice, (Golomb, 2004; Malchiodi, 1998; Trautner, 2008); the bulk ofthe children in the present study drew objects using their canonical colours (e.g.,brown and green for trees, yellow for blonde hair). Consistent with this view,Winston et al. (1995) have argued that the goal of drawing realistically competeswith using colour to portray emotion. In their study, they asked 9- to 12-year-oldchildren to draw pictures of happy and sad trees. Children were explicitly told tofocus on expressing the emotion in their drawing. Half of the children were notgiven the canonical colours that represent realistic trees (e.g., brown, green). A dif-ferent group of children were asked to determine which colours were happy col-ours and which colours were sad. When realistic tree colours were unavailable,children were more likely to use the colours rated as happy to draw happy pic-tures, and colours rated as sad to draw sad pictures (see also, Picard & Lebaz,2010). Importantly, however, the drawing task in Winston et al. (1995) was highlycircumscribed (i.e., happy and sad trees). Whether similar findings would beobtained with more complex drawings is not known, but from a practical per-spective, it is difficult to anticipate what objects or events children in therapy



might choose to draw, making removal of canonical colour options impossible dur-ing a clinical interview. Thus, children’s attempts to use colour realistically would al-ways influence the colour of the drawings that they produce in a clinical context.

The present findings add to a large body of research showing that there is noevidence that researchers (or clinicians) can use single signs in children’s drawings,including the size of objects or their proximity to each other, the presence or omis-sion of details, the level of detail, line heaviness, or use of space, to draw psycho-logically valid conclusions about a child (Joiner et al., 1996; Reithmiller & Handler,1997; Strange et al., 2010; Thomas & Jolley, 1998). In line with this research, and onthe basis of our findings, we conclude that there is also limited validity associatedwith interpreting the use of colour in children’s drawings.

In conclusion, we investigated whether children use colour to portray emotionwhen they are asked to draw about their emotional experiences. In both clinicaland nonclinical samples, children did not vary their use of colour to match the emo-tion of their drawings. Children were most likely to use their preferred colours, re-gardless of the emotional content of the event depicted in the drawing.Furthermore, children’s attempt to portray objects realistically is likely to be anothermajor factor that determines the colours that children choose when they draw. Weconclude that it would be virtually impossible to glean the emotional content of achild’s drawing on the basis of his or her colour preferences or specific colour use.Until research demonstrates otherwise, we recommend that clinicians and therapistsworking with children avoid making assumptions about a child’s feelings based onthe colours that he or she incorporates in a drawing. Instead, adults should focus onusing drawing as a tool to engage children in an interview process and to facilitateverbal communication between the child and clinician.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by grants from the Marsden Fund of the Royal Soci-ety of New Zealand and from the University of Otago. The research was part of aPhD thesis conducted by Emily Crawford under the supervision of Harlene Hayneand Julien Gross.

Notes

1. The clinicians were unable to judge four of the 3- to 4-year-olds’ events due tothe ambiguity of the emotion depicted; these drawings were removed from fur-ther analyses.

2. Only one child used white in the colouring-in task, so this colour was removedfrom the related analyses.

3. Two children were unable to complete drawings about what made them feelbetter in hospital because they could not think of a related experience. Five chil-dren were unable to complete drawings about an experience that made themfeel worried or scared when they were in hospital because they could not thinkof a related experience.

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Does Children's Colour Use Reflect the Emotional Content of their Drawings?

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