The effect of drawing and socioeconomic status on children's reports of a past experience

Abstract

When children are interviewed about a prior experience using open-ended questions, the opportunity to draw increases the amount of information they report without decreasing their accuracy. Given that prior research has only included children from middle-to upper-middle class backgrounds, it is not clear whether the technique is effective for children from more challenging backgrounds that are overrepresented in clinical and legal contexts. Here, we examined the effect of drawing on children's verbal reports as a function of the socioeconomic status (SES) of their families. A total of 125 children (5-and 6-year-olds) were recruited from schools with a socioeconomic rating of low-, middle-, or upper-middle class. They participated in a novel event and were interviewed 1 month later. Half of the children were given the opportunity to draw during the interview and half were not. Regardless of SES, drawing increased the amount of information that children reported. Drawing also ameliorated the impact of memory ability on the amount that children reported. Additionally, children from low SES backgrounds were less accurate than were children from higher SES backgrounds and they remained less accurate even when they were drawing. These findings have important implications for interviewing children in clinical and legal contexts.