Working with developmental disabilities is a challenge — especially when the groups are not split up according to cognitive ability. I have some clients who are naming the scribble, while others are functioning on a schematic level in the same group. I find that art as therapy is a great approach with the lower functioning clients, however the higher functioning one’s seem to benefit from art psychotherapy as well.
In an effort to ballance the needs of the group, I’ve been trying to take a middle road approach (similar to Wadeson) when planning directives, but the fact remains that some of the clients do not have the ability to process abstract concepts due to their developmental level. Sometimes I wonder if my approach goes over their heads. At the same time, these clients don’t seem to notice any discrepancy between themselves and others while they are engaged in the process of art making, in a similar way that a 4 year old doing artwork alongside an 8 year old does not seem to notice the differences in cognitive ability between himself and the 8 year old. They seem to take pleasure in the art making process and don’t seem self conscious of others in the group.
What I have found very tricky, however, is introducing a particular directive in a way that everyone can understand so that the lower functioning people do not become agitated because the concepts are overly complex and so that the higher functioning people feel challenged and acknowledged. I guess that will come with time.
“do not have the ability to process abstract concepts” I’d like you to explain this a little more. are you talking about their inability to understand what love is? loyalty? duty? patriotism? which abstract concepts are over their heads?
Good question. I can see how my statement could be misinterpreted…
What I was referring to here was from a theory of creative and mental growth created by Lowenfeld & Brittain (1987). What this theory postulates is that all children go through specific cognitive developmental levels that can deduced by the stage they are in artistically. There are 6 developmental levels: 1) The scribble stage (age 2-4), 2) The preschematic stage (age 4-7), 3) The schematic stage (age 7-9), 4) The gang stage (age 9-12), 5) The pseudo-naturalistic stage (age 12-14) and 6) The period of decision (14- ).
An art therapist named Myra Levick joined Lowenfeld & Brittain’s theory with Piaget (a cognitive/developmental psychologist) and psychodynamic theory. Basically, she argues that in one’s art work there is evidence of not only an artistic developmental level, but that the developmental level also corresponds to a particular cognitive level and defense mechanisms.
The scribble stage is where first mark making emerges, eventually moving into the preschematic stage where human forms begin becoming represented in one’s artwork. These stages correspond to Piaget’s preoperational stage of thought, where the child begins to go beyond direct experience with objects, allowing for symbolic thinking, making play, drawing and language processing possible. The child’s ability differs greatly from the beginning to the end of the preoperational stage. For example at age 2-3 a child can usually classify objects only on the basis of one characteristic (these things are orange, these things are round), where as by age 7 a child can begin understanding basic concepts of conservation (that the water in a tall glass may be the same amount as in a short glass), and they can being working with numbers (counting, addition).
The ability to determine the cause of events, and space/time relationships comes later on in the concrete operational stage that begins at approx. age 7. The reason the concrete operational stage is referred to as “concrete”, is because indeed the child thinking concretely- not in an abstract reasoning sort of way…I’ll give you an example I read from http://scied.gsu.edu/Hassard/mos/2.8.html:
“…Suppose you show a student a picture of some plants (carrot, grass, oak tree, cabbage, dandelion). In this task the student is asked to identify which of the pictures is a plant. Most children will readily include the grass in the category of plant, but not tree, carrot or dandelion. (the tree was a plant when it was little, but now it is big, and therefore a tree). As students grow older and their cognitive development gets more sophisticated, and their experiences widen, they will develop the ability to include all these objects in the general class of plant…”
So, to make a long story short, what I was referring to was the fact that some clients I work with (who are adults) are drawing at the scribble stage. People with developmental disabilities will always produce artwork at younger stages than what you would expect according to their biological age. As a side note, anxiety, emotional distress, psychosis and trauma can also sometimes affect the developmental level seen in a drawing, which is why it’s very important for art therapists to assess multiple drawings when beginning to hypothesize about a particular client.
Either way, according to Myra Levick’s theory, those who are working in the scribble stage are exhibiting cognitive abilities are that of a 2-4 year old, who would not be able to reason abstractly. Certainly these people have a concept of love, although they may have difficulty explaining what that word means, or how it makes them feel beyond the word “happy”. At this stage, they would not be able to use a color to represent love, since during this stage color use is arbitrary. I think these clients would have difficulty understanding terms like loyalty, duty and patriotism, in the same way a 2-4 year old may not grasp their meaning.
I hope this answers your question. I’m sorry this response is so freakin long!
thanks for explaining this in such depth, this is so fascinating to me!
I spent the morning writing a response to this on my blog if you care to read it!
http://99daz.com/?p=119