CHILDREN`S DRAWINGS AS A TRIAGE TOOL FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONALITY IN REFUGEE CHILDREN

Authors

  • Jelena Sokić Department of Psychology, Faculty of Sport and Tourism, EDUCONS University, Novi Sad, Serbia
  • Dušanka Đurović Department of Psychology, Faculty of Sport and Tourism, EDUCONS University, Novi Sad, Serbia
  • Mikloš Biro Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19090/pp.2019.3.245-262

Keywords:

drawings, expressive strategies, refugee children, trauma indicators

Abstract

The study sought to examine the possible indirect trauma indica- tors among refugee children’s drawings. We have analyzed draw- ings of refugee children and non-refugee children as controls (5 - 9 years old). The content and Pickard’s expressive strategies for mood depiction were analyzed on 464 drawings. The content analysis revealed different content-specific categories across groups, with the category of Violence/War appearing significantly more in the drawings of the refugee group. and being used as one of the trauma indicators. The analysis revealed that negative mood was depicted by more complex and detailed drawings in both groups. An expressive strategy, namely the literal strategy, appeared to be specific to the refugee group only (e.g., absence of facial characteristics), while different patterns of non-literal ex- pressive strategies were observed in conveying mood between the two groups. Our findings suggest that the drawings can be used as a triage tool to assess the emotional status of refugee children.

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Published

01.10.2019

How to Cite

Sokić, J., Đurović, D., & Biro, M. (2019). CHILDREN`S DRAWINGS AS A TRIAGE TOOL FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONALITY IN REFUGEE CHILDREN. Primenjena Psihologija, 12(3), 245–262. https://doi.org/10.19090/pp.2019.3.245-262

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