Can the family drawing be a useful tool for assessing attachment representations in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Pace, Cecilia Serena; Muzi, Stefania; Madera, Francesco; Sansò, Alessandra; Zavattini, Giulio Cesare

doi:10.1080/14616734.2021.1991664

Cited by 8 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…The Conjoint Family Drawing provides an answer to the increasing need for tools for family assessment ( Handler and Thomas, 2014 ; Pourhosein et al, 2016 ; Klumpp et al, 2020 ). It allows to read family functioning both in clinical ( Pace et al, 2021 ) and socio-educational situations ( Van Velsor and Cox, 2000 ), as well as in research settings. This tool might come in handy, especially in cases of speech or verbal impairments as it doesn’t draw upon the dialogic-narrative channel as a source of information; specifically, by leveraging on images, it can facilitate the access to the interactive and symbolic dimensions of family exchanges.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further studies involving larger samples and specific target samples are needed in order to confirm the discriminant validity of this instrument ( Pace et al, 2021 ). Moreover, studies comparing the outcomes obtained from the administration of the Conjoint Family Drawing with results from other assessment techniques are needed in order to prove the instrument’s reliability and specificity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Conjoint Family Drawing: A Tool to Explore About Family Relationships

Gennari

Tamanza

2022

Front. Psychol.

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In this article we will present the Conjoint Family Drawing, a graphic-interactive tool developed to evaluate family relationships. This tool allows an analytical and clinical evaluation of families and their relationships while facilitating the understanding of the overall family functioning through a synthetic coding system which distinguishes families from each other. First of all, a presentation of the analytical coding system is provided; such system consists of a grid, formed by two distinct levels of observation: the analysis of the product, which, in turn focuses on two levels, the global-familiar one (given by the overall drawing) and the individual one (given the individual members’ drawings), and the analysis of the drawing process (what happens during the realization of the drawing), which is made up of the observations of family interactions at the individual and group level. Consistently with our objectives and the theoretical and methodological literature on family drawing in its various forms and ways of implementation, 10 indicators for product analysis and 9 indicators for process analysis have been identified. A sample of 117 Conjoint Family Drawings was analyzed in order to verify the coding system’s applicability and effectiveness. The sample was constituted according to a convenience (not probabilistic) criterion. Following, a computing system was developed to allow the investigation of the overall family functioning through three steps: (1) the analysis of the frequency distribution of each indicator, in order to verify the non-determinability rates and the distribution of the different answer options; (2) a two-step cluster analysis, to determine homogeneous groups of Conjoint Family Drawings and identify, within each cluster (and comparatively between the clusters), the indicators and answer modalities that mostly affect the clusters’ aggregation itself; (3) the development of a synthetic system to code the Conjoint Family Drawing, beginning with the indicators that define the typological profiles of the clusters obtained. The synthetic system was developed through a summative and logical-combinatorial method, merging the most discriminating and clinically significant coding items, that is, those that are best associable to specific ways of family functioning. Seven family types emerged from these analyses: families characterized by optimal functioning, families characterized by adequate functioning, families characterized by chaotic functioning, families characterized by fragile paternity, families characterized by separate functioning, families with multiproblematic functioning and residual families. The characteristics of these family types will be outlined in this article.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Conjoint Family Drawing: A Tool to Explore About Family Relationships

Gennari

Tamanza

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…Particularly, the results of the meta-analyses with the SSP ( van Ijzendoorn et al, 1992 ) and with FD ( Pace et al, 2021 ) converge toward the higher prevalence of secure classifications over the insecure ones in community children and security scores as the highest in Fury’s scales. Moreover, with both instruments, the community children showed higher security than clinical and at-risk ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…As shown by a recent systematic review and meta-analysis on this topic ( Pace et al, 2021 ), the FD has been increasingly used to assess attachment in the last decade, either with community, clinical, or at-risk children from 5 to 13 years old. Most of the studies employed a double coding system, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family drawing for assessing attachment in children: Weaknesses and strengths

2022

Self Cite

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“…Drawing is precisely a way to give voice to children, even at a relatively early age; it provides an alternative form of representation, tapping into visual and emotional meanings; it leads to a succinct presentation of the key elements of participants’ experiences, and, last but not least, “it allows participants’ unique experiences, rather than researcher constructs, to be communicated” ( Freeman and Mathison, 2009 , p. 114). This is especially important when you want to question a school-age child, whose negative experiences occur more and more farther from the direct gaze of adults and on which, therefore, it is difficult to ask “the right questions.” Examples of the use of pictorial representations of relationships (in this case, family) with children of this age are Carlson et al (2004) and, more recently, Pace et al (2020) ; refer to also Pace et al (2021) for a useful review and discussion of this pictorial approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representation of Friendship and Aggressive Behavior in Primary School Children

et al. 2022

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This study examines the representation of friendship during middle childhood and its impact on aggressive behavior. The literature shows that friendship is almost a “gym of social skills,” which, in turn, are protective factors against aggressive behavior; in this regard, the quality of friendship is especially important, but this quality becomes less and less accessible to direct observation as children grow older and spend most of their time in the externally regulated environment of primary school. To assess friendship quality requires allowing children to present their own perspective on the relationship, a goal that we have tackled through drawing. Children aged 6–11 years were individually asked to draw themselves and a close friend in two situations (i.e., relational wellbeing and relational distress) and to complete a 20-item scale of physical and verbal aggression. Data were analyzed with three main aims, namely, (1) to show if and how the representation of two core features of relationships (i.e., relatedness and individuality) changes according to the situation and/or according to the children’s gender; (2) to focus on the representation of distressing situations to verify if they coincide with forms of conflict and if they differ according to the children’s gender; and (3) to verify if the strength of indices of relatedness and individuality, both in situations of wellbeing and distress, predicts children’s tendency to enact aggressive behaviors. The results confirm that relatedness is the dominant feature of friendship, especially in the situation of wellbeing and when the situation becomes distressing. Conflict is not always present when children do not feel fine with their friends; boys and girls do not differ significantly in this regard, but they do differ in terms of the management of relatedness and individuality when problematic situations arise. In line with previous studies, sex is the main predictor of aggressive behavior with peers, with boys more at risk than girls; however, the capacity to relate with one’s own friend even in difficult times (in which boys are not inferior to girls) predicts lesser aggression with peers in general.

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Can the family drawing be a useful tool for assessing attachment representations in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Cited by 8 publications

References 55 publications

The Conjoint Family Drawing: A Tool to Explore About Family Relationships

The Conjoint Family Drawing: A Tool to Explore About Family Relationships

Family drawing for assessing attachment in children: Weaknesses and strengths

Representation of Friendship and Aggressive Behavior in Primary School Children

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