1. Abstract
The aim of this study is to investigate whether drawing facilitates young children’s
verbal recall of video information and whether the order in which the verbal recall and
drawing occurs is an important factor in determining whether drawing does have a
facilitatory effect. Eighty primary school children, forty aged 3 – 4 years and forty
aged 5 – 6 years, were shown a short video clip and were asked to recall 3 days later.
The children recalled in a ‘tell only’ group, a ‘draw and tell’ group, a ‘draw then tell’
group or a ‘tell then draw and tell’ group. It was found that there was no effect of
recall condition or age on recall score, however there was a difference in the type of
information recalled. All children recalled more objects than any other recall category
followed by actions and sayings, with colours recalled least. Therefore, this study
does not support previous research findings which have indicated positive effects of
drawing on young children’s recall,
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2. Introduction
Due to recent legal cases whereby children have been the primary witness in a trial,
and as such have been required to give evidence, greater importance has been placed
onto child witness testimony. As research tells us that memory is reconstructive in
adults (Bartlett, 1932, Loftus, 1972), it must be acknowledged that this is particularly
true in the case of young children. It is commonly accepted that younger children tend
to recall much less information than older children and adults (Fundudis, 1989). This
may produce problems if a young child gives false evidence in a case that may result
in a serious penalty or sentence for the accused. For this reason, it has not always been
the case that children have been considered as reliable witnesses (Rowlands and Cox,
2003). Therefore, there is a growing need for more information about how accurate
children’s memories and the conditions in which more accurate memories are likely to
be obtained (Butler, Gross and Hayne, 1995).
A strong working memory is crucial during childhood as children require it to process
and store information to build upon later to, this forms knowledge and understanding.
As pointed out by Baddeley (1995), "any system for storing information...will need (1)
to be able to encode...information; (2) to store it; and subsequently (3) to retrieve that
information”. If anything goes wrong at any of these stages, problems with memory
will result. Siegler (1998) suggests that even information that has been successfully
encoded and stored by a child can be difficult for them to successfully retrieve. It is
suggested that the retrieval process presents the most problems to children’s memory.
Therefore actions must be taken in order to aid children in their retrieval techniques to
ensure more accurate accounts. Fivush and Hammond (1990) found that new and
more accurate information about an event, initially recalled when the child was 21
/2
years old, continues to be recalled until the child was 4 years old. This suggests that
all information has been successfully encoded and stored, but a problem must have
occurred during retrieval. They postulated that the processes required for this more
accurate retrieval were still developing and therefore more equipped to manage vast
amounts of recall. Tulving (1983) devised the ‘encoding specificity’, predicting that
memory is most effective when the overlap between recall and encoding conditions is
greatest. This can be increased by the use of props and toys.
An effective method used to aid retrieval is the implementation of verbal prompts and
props, into the interviewing process. Salmon, Bidrose and Pipe (1995) investigated
the extent to which real props, toy props and verbal prompts facilitated verbal recall.
They found that verbal recall given by five year olds was, in fact, facilitated by real
and toy props in comparison to no props at all. This suggests that physical props do
help some children’s recall. It was also found that the use of toy props hindered recall
in younger children, who appeared to engage in spontaneous play with the toys, which
acted as interference to the information being recalled, it was suggested that real props
would be more effective than toys. However, it appears that the use of props may
cause many methodological problems, particularly in cases where the interviewer
knows little about the event on which the questions are based, it is therefore
problematic to obtain props which are relevant to the event. In light of this a technique
needs to be devised whereby children can receive the same memory cues they would
receive from props, without any prior knowledge of the event being required by the
interviewer.
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3. Drawing is a particularly useful form of prompt, as the child is guiding their own
prompts through self generated cues; this requires no input from the interviewer
whatsoever and the child is able to focus on aspects of the event which appealed to
them personally, the more interested they are in an event, the more likely they are to
want to talk about it. The child’s drawings give the interviewer a reference point on
which to base questions in order to prompt the child into recalling more information.
The planned nature of drawing may help the child to structure their memory into a
sequence which may help the child to remember more information. It may be
suggested that drawing is a useful way to distract the child from an otherwise
uncomfortable situation. As drawing is often regarded by children as a fun activity,
this may calm any anxiety that they may feel. This may also help maintain the child’s
focus by motivating them to play a more active role in the interview. As well as
providing a visual cue for the child’s memory, drawing may also provide a focus for
discussion whereby the interviewer asks them about what is happening in the picture
rather than what they can remember about the event. Drawing has been used as
children have a certain level of drawing ability and therefore need no previous
training to carry out a drawing task from memory, also the nature of the drawings
means that the child’s depictions are designed to mean more to the child than to the
researcher as the picture is used to elicit memory processes. Fivrush and Hammond
(1990) suggested that children are unable to generate retrieval cues spontaneously.
Taking this into account Butler et al (1995) hypothesised that drawing may counteract
this, as once a child draws one aspect of an event, this may cue retrieval of the event
that immediately follows, therefore leading to greater detailed accounts.
There are currently four methods of testing whether drawing helps recall; staged
events, emotional events, laboratory experiments and the use of video clips.
Staged events are events whereby the child witnesses a physical event as it happens.
Butler, Gross, and Hayne (1995) took 32 3 to 4 year olds and 32 5 to 6 year olds on an
excursion to a fire station and interviewed them about it one day later and again one
month later. The groups were split in two, half of the children were asked to draw and
tell what they remembered and the other half were asked to simply tell what
happened. The 5 to 6 year olds in the drawing group reported more information than
the 5 to 6 year olds in the tell group after the one month delay. This effect was not
found in the 3 to 4 year olds as drawing did appear to increase the amount of
information recalled by younger children. Gross and Hayne (1999) took 55 5 to 6 year
old school children on a trip to a chocolate factory. The children were split into 2
groups; the first group was interviewed a day later whereas the other group was
interviewed six months later. The groups were split further into a draw and tell group
and a tell only group. They found that in both time frames, those in the draw and tell
groups recalled significantly more information than those in the tell only groups, this
was also found when the children were re-interviewed 1 year later. Salmon and Pipe
(2000) interviewed 101 5 year olds about a routine health check at school following
delays of either both 3 days and 1 year or just after 1 year. The children were split into
three interview groups; one using medical props, one using verbal prompts and the
other using drawings. They found that children interviewed with props recalled more
information than those asked to draw or interviewed with verbal prompts, particularly
after the long delay. Information that was repeated after the long gap tended to be
highly reliable, however, in the drawing condition, new information recalled tended
not to be. These findings have important implications in applied contexts such as
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4. when children are called upon to provide testimony following very long delays.
Salmon and Pipe’s findings show a clear difference between the findings of Gross and
Hayne’s studies this may be due to the nature of the event; a routine health check
would not be as stimulating for the children as a trip to a fire station or a chocolate
factory.
In legal cases, it is highly likely that the event that children will be asked to recall will
often be quite emotionally charged. For this reason Gross and Hayne (1998)
investigated children’s recall of emotionally laden events. Children were asked to
either draw and tell or just tell the interviewer about a time they felt happy, sad,
scared or angry. Those in the draw and tell group reported twice as much accurate
information as those in the tell group. These findings suggest that drawing may
facilitate young children's ability to talk about their emotional experiences in both
clinical and legal contexts. It was also found that objects were recalled more than
actions, places and people in the draw and tell group. In addition, it was found that
better drawers recalled more information; this suggests that developmental changes in
drawing skill may define the conditions under which drawing will be most effective.
Furthermore, studies by Salmon and her colleagues have also found beneficial effects
of drawing on recall of emotionally laden events. (Salmon, Roncoloato and
Gleitzman, 2003)
Although these methods have produced strong support for the use of drawing to aid
recall, it may be argued that these methods are highly problematic with regards to
control. As the child is witnessing an actual live event, it is difficult to control for
what the child has actually seen. Davison and Thomas (2001) conducted 4 studies
presenting children with items on a board and removing them once they have seen
them all. The children were split into either tell only groups, draw and tell groups). In
experiment 1 they showed two groups of children, (5 to 6 years and 7 to 8 years) a list
of 25 items (5 colours, shapes, sounds, categories and unrelated) and asked them to
recall them after a 4-hour delay. The children were spilt into two groups; tell only and
draw and tell. They found that those in the draw and tell group did not significantly
differ from those in the tell only group, they also found that older children recalled
most. In experiment 2, they included the draw then tell condition in order to separate
cognitive demands of drawing and telling which may have accounted for previous
findings. They asked 60 5 to 6 and 7 to 8 year olds to recall items once they had
completed drawings. They found that 7 year olds recalled more in the tell only group
suggesting that drawing inhibits recall in younger children, but not older children.
Overall they found that there were significantly fewer items recalled by children in the
drawing groups than in the tell only groups. These findings consistently refute the
positive drawing influence over recall that has been consistently reported in other
staged and emotional event studies. They concluded that the recall of a list of objects
is unlikely to be required in the real world and may not be very engaging for the child.
This gave rise to the implementation of video clips in child memory studies; along
with the investigation of the effect drawing has when verbal recall is given after the
drawing phase of the interview.
Video studies have proven to be very successful methods of testing eyewitness
memory as it overcomes the limits of other methodologies in the fact they provide a
control in the study, as all participants witness the same parts of the event from the
same angle, this would increase the studies’ validity as the amount and type of
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5. information being viewed can be directly controlled. Jolley, Apperley and Bokhari
(2002) showed 60 5 – 6 years olds a 10-minute video clip and asked them to recall it.
They were split into three groups; tell only, draw and tell and draw then tell. They
were asked to recall as much information as possible (free recall); this was then
followed by two directed questions. The video information that was recalled was
categorised into four groups; items, colours, actions and sayings. The findings showed
that the drawing groups recalled significantly more items than the tell–only group.
The draw then tell group recalled significantly more actions than the other groups, this
indicates that drawing facilitates children’s recall of items and actions better than
colours and sayings when recalling video information. This study supports the claim
that drawing is particularly useful for cuing children’s description of items (Butler et
al, 1995). Rowlands and Cox (2002) studied recall of video information in 22 5 year
olds and split them into draw and tell or tell only groups. They were asked to free
recall everything they could; this was followed by direct questions relating to the four
categories. The findings showed that drawing groups reported more information
overall. However, this only occurred when the raters had both transcripts and
drawings to refer to and only for free recall. Rowlands and Cox (2003) studied recall
of video information in 96 3 to 8 year olds in order investigate which age group would
benefit from the drawing condition the most. The children were shown a 2 minute
video clip of a theft and interviewed about it a day later. They were split into either
draw and tell or tell only groups. They found that children in the drawing conditions
recalled significantly more, accurate information than those in the tell only groups.
This, again, only occurred when raters were provided with both transcripts and
drawings as reference. Unlike the previous study but consistent with others (Butler et
al, 1995 and Gross and Hayne, 1999) recall was positively related to the quality of the
drawings. They also found that drawing was greatest during free recall and those in
the draw and tell group recalled more in both free recall and directed questions than
those in the tell only group.
The studies in this area have produced inconsistent findings, this suggests that further
investigation is required, so this study compared tell only groups with draw and tell
groups. Whilst a number of studies (Davison and Thomas, 2001; Jolley, Apperley and
Bokhari, 2002) have attempted to separate the drawing and telling components of the
draw and tell condition by asking children to draw then tell, no study to date has asked
children to verbally recall before drawing. As well as asking children to “draw and
tell” and “draw then tell”, this study asked children to “tell then draw and tell” in
order to investigate whether the order of the drawing and telling components of the
draw and tell method facilitate optimum recall. There have also been mixed finding
presented for the variable of age, although it has been established that drawing helps
recall in 5 to 6 year olds, it is still unclear as to whether drawing helps recall in 3 to 4
year olds, this requires further testing. Therefore, this study compared 3 to 4 year olds
and 5 to 6 year old to see which group was affected most successfully. The study was
also conducted to see if the different drawing conditions would replicate findings on
different types of information recalled (Jolley et al, 2002).
The aim of this study is to investigate whether drawing facilitates young children’s
verbal recall of video information. The study shall investigate whether drawing has a
stronger effect over recall in younger or older children and more specifically whether
the point at which the child gives verbal recall, (either during, after or both before and
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6. during the drawing process) has an effect on how well they remember the clip. Also
what features (objects, actions, colours or sayings) this facilitates best.
The hypotheses of the study are firstly that more information will be recalled in the 3
drawing conditions (draw and tell, draw then tell, tell then draw and tell), compared to
tell only, and secondly that there will be a difference in recall across the 3 drawing
conditions. Older children (5 to 6 year olds) will recall more than younger children (3
to 4 year olds), particularly with the drawing conditions. Finally, objects and actions
will be recalled more, particularly in the drawing conditions.
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7. Method.
Design.
A mixed-subjects design was used with three independent variables. These consisted
of: the recall condition groups (this was a between-subjects variable which consisted
of four levels; tell only, draw and tell, draw then tell, tell then draw and tell), the age
of the children (this was also a between subjects variable consisting of two groups 3 to
4 years and 5 to 6 years), and the recall category (this was a within-subjects variable
consisting of four levels; actions, objects, sayings and colours). The dependent
variable was the amount of verbal information recalled by the participant (recall
score).
The memory event was a five-minute children’s video, this was shown to the
participants in small groups of six, in order to avoid distractions caused by large
numbers of children. Each child was interviewed individually, in order to protect from
influences from other children, which may prompt their own memories and all
children recalled after 3 days.
Ethical Approval was received prior to the data collection and the schools were asked
to complete a Workplace Checklist (See Appendix 3). A full Criminal Record Bureau
check was obtained and presented to the school’s head teachers prior to the data
collection. Informed parental consent was also obtained which gave the parent the
opportunity to withdraw their child’s participation at any time (See Appendix 2). In
order to ensure that all children who had seen the video were interviewed, class
teachers were required to keep a list of names of children to send in for the interviews,
the interviewer was informed of each child’s first name in order to establish rapport,
none of the participants’ names were retained by the interviewer or used outside of the
classroom setting. All participants were assigned a randomised numerical code for
data collection and analyses in order to ensure anonymity.
Materials.
A video of a five minute children’s television programme about gravity called ‘Cat’s
Eyes’ was used along with a video player and television were used. Additional
materials used consisted of an A4 piece of plain paper, a HB pencil, an eraser and an
assortment of coloured pencils that were provided for all children in the drawing
conditions. A dictation devise was also used in order to record the children’s
responses in addition to the score sheet (see Appendix 4) that was used to record the
participants’ recall scores.
Pilot Study.
A pilot study was conducted testing four children, two from the 3 to 4 year olds group
and two from the 5 to 6 year olds group. This was done in order to ensure that the
video material was understood by both age groups and to ensure that the method
employed was valid for the purpose of the research. The pilot study revealed that no
amendments to the procedure were necessary.
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8. Participants.
Eighty primary school children were recruited to participate after being randomly
selected from class registers. Forty participants (20 boys and 20 girls) aged 3 to 4
years were tested along with forty participants (20 boys and 20 girls) aged 5 to 6
years. Each group; tell only, draw and tell, draw then tell, tell then draw and tell,
consisted of twenty participants, ten from the 3 to 4 year olds group and ten from the
5 – 6 year olds group, each group of ten had roughly equal amounts of males and
females. Children were recruited through two primary schools in Biddulph, Stoke –
on – Trent. All children had informed parental consent prior to data collection.
Procedure.
The memory event and interviews took place in a quiet classroom, close to the child’s
own classroom; a teacher was present in the room at all times. All of the children were
shown the video in small groups of around six. Once all children had seen the video
clip, the experimenter explained that he would return to interview each child
individually three days later. At the beginning of the interview, in order to make the
child more comfortable, the interviewer took a few minutes to introduce himself and
converse with the child. The child was seated to the side of the experimenter instead
of directly in front so that the child didn’t feel under any pressure to answer the
questions. Once the child appeared to be at ease, the interview began. All participants
were asked a similar open ended question to begin with:
“Do you remember the video that we watched three days ago? I would like
you to think back and tell me everything that you can remember about what
happened in the video, do you think that you could do that for me?”
Participants were randomly assigned to one of four recall conditions; ‘Tell Only’,
‘Draw and Tell’, ‘Draw then Tell’ and ‘Tell then Draw and Tell’. In the tell only
condition, participants were only given this open ended response. Although no
directed questions were asked about the video, the interviewer did respond to the
children’s accounts and prompt further memory by asking things like ‘can you
remember what happened next?’ (This was also done in the 3 drawing conditions).
In the draw and tell condition, the child was given a sheet of plain A4 paper and given
a wide selection of coloured pencils and was asked:
“I would like you to think back and draw for me what happened, I would also
like for you to tell me everything that you can remember about what happened
in the video as you draw it.”
In addition to the general prompt, ‘can you remember what happened next?, also
children were asked, in response to their pictorial accounts, ‘what’s going on in this
part of the picture?’ in all of the drawing conditions.
In the draw then tell condition the child was told,
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9. “Do you remember the video that we watched three days ago? I would like
you to think back and draw for me what you can remember.” Once they had
finished their drawing, the interviewer then asked, “I would now like you to
tell me everything that you can remember about what happened in the video,
do you think that you could do that for me?”
Finally, in the tell, then draw and tell condition the child was given the same
instructions as in the tell only condition. Once the child was unable to remember any
more information, they were then given the same instructions as in the draw and tell
group.
The prompt questions given in each condition were asked three times for all
participants in order to ensure a degree of control within the questioning.
Scoring of Interviews
Interviews were recorded in their entirety and transcribed. Transcriptions were then
scored using a score sheet (see Appendix 4) whereby a point was given for each item
recalled. Total sores were then calculated for the four types of recall; actions, objects,
colours and sayings. The drawings themselves did not form part of the scores or
analysis.
9

10. Results
The data was screened for homogeneity of variance and normal distribution; all of the
parametric assumptions were fulfilled. Inter-rater reliability was checked by a second
rater assessing 10% of the interview transcripts. There was a 98% agreement level and
the remaining 2% was negotiated and eventually mutually agreed upon by the two
raters.
Table 1: Means and standard deviations for each of the four recall categories from the video
(actions, objects, colours and sayings, recalled from the four recall conditions (tell only, draw and
tell, draw then tell, tell then draw and tell) across the two age groups (3-4s and 5-6s)
Age
Condition Actions Objects Colours Sayings
Mean Std Dev Mean Std Dev Mean Std Dev Mean Std Dev
3 - 4
Years
Tell Only 4.70 (3.62) 6.10 (2.23) 1.00 (1.70) .70 (1.16)
Draw and Tell 3.60 (3.24) 4.80 (2.48) .10 (.32) .70 (.95)
Draw then
Tell
4.60 (3.63) 4.70 (1.64) .40 (.84) .60 (.84)
Tell then
Draw and Tell
4.20 (2.30) 5.20 (3.12) .50 (.85) 1.00 (1.05)
Total 4.27 (3.14) 5.20 (2.40) .50 (1.06) .75 (.98)
5 – 6
Years
Tell Only 5.00 (1.94) 6.50 (3.34) .20 (.42) .80 (.79)
Draw and Tell 6.20 (2.70) 6.30 (1.89) .50 (1.27) .70 (1.25)
Draw then
Tell
6.10 (3.03) 6.10 (2.38) .80 (1.62) .70 (.95)
Tell then
Draw and Tell
5.60 (3.83) 5.80 (2.94) .20 (.63) .60 (.70)
Total 5.72 (2.88) 6.17 (2.60) .42 (1.08) .70 (.91)
Total
Tell Only 4.85 (2.83) 6.30 (2.77) .60 (1.27) .75 (.97)
Draw and Tell 4.90) (3.19) 5.55 (2.28) .30 (.92) .70 (1.08)
Draw then
Tell
5.35 (3.34) 5.54 (2.38) .60 (1.27) .65 (.87)
Tell then
Draw and Tell
4.90 (3.16) 5.50 (2.96) .35 (.74) .80 (.89)
Total 5.00 (3.08) 5.69 (2.53) .46 (1.07) .72 (.94)
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11. A 3 way mixed ANOVA (see Appendix 5:4) was conducted in order to investigate the
effect of recall condition, age and recall category on recall score. This showed a
significant main effect of recall category, (F (3,216) = 198.74, MSE = 3.06, p = <.01, η2
= .73, power = 1.00). There was no significant main effect for condition on recall, (F
(3,72) .13, MSE = 9.12, p = .94, η2
= <.01, power = .07) retrospective power analysis
showed that between 200 and 300 participants would be needed in each condition in
order to obtain a significant result. The main effect of age on recall was non-
significant, (F (1,72) = 2.89, MSE = 9.12, p = .09, η2
= .04, power = .39) retrospective
power analysis showed that between 70 and 80 participants would be needed in each
condition in order to obtain a significant result.
As the three-way ANOVA showed a significant main effect of recall category, a set of
6 post hoc pair-wise contrasts were conducted using within subjects t-tests to see if
any differences lied with the four categories (see Appendix 5:6). A family-wise error
rate was set at .5 for a two tailed test. The results showed that recall for actions and
objects was always significantly better in comparison with recall for colours and
sayings, objects were recalled significantly better than actions and, finally, there was
no significant difference found between recall of colours and sayings.
Furthermore, the interaction of age and recall condition was found to be non-
significant, (F (3,72) = .56, MSE = 9.12, p = .64, η2
= .02, power = .16) retrospective
power analysis showed that between 200 and 300 participants would be needed in
each condition in order to obtain a significant result. The interaction of recall
condition and recall category was found to be non-significant, (F (9,216) = .43, MSE =
3.06, p = .92, η2
= .02, power = .21) retrospective power analysis showed that 160
participants would be needed in each condition in order to obtain a significant result.
The interaction of age and recall category was found to be significant, (F (3,216) = 3.78,
MSE = 3.06, p = .01, η2
= .05, power = .81). The interaction of age and recall category
and recall condition was found to be non-significant, (F (9,216) = .31, MSE = 3.06, p = .
97, η2
= .01, power = .16) retrospective power analysis showed that 160 participants
would be needed in each condition in order to obtain a significant result.
As a significant interaction was found between age and recall category, this was
followed by a series of four between – subject’s t-tests, investigating age on the 4
recall categories (See Appendix 5:5). In order to determine whether the results given
in t-tests were accurate, the critical t must first be found. Analysis showed a critical t
of 2.40, as this was greater than the observe t for each of the four recall categories, the
level of significance given could be accepted. Due to the fact that conducting 4 t-tests
on a set of data increases the likelihood of a significant result and therefore a type 1
error, a Bonferonni correction was applied to the alpha which lowered the required
alpha level to .0125. It was found that there was a non-significant difference between
the ages for the actions category, (t(78) = -2.15, p = .04, d = .34, power = .37)
retrospective power analysis showed that 140 participants would be needed in each
condition in order to obtain a significant result. it was acknowledged that the
difference here was approaching significance, showing that 5 to 6 year olds recalled
more actions than 3 to 4 year olds. It was also found that there was a non-significant
difference between the ages for the objects category, (t(78) = -1.74, p = .09, d = .27,
11

12. power = .37) retrospective power analysis showed that 140 participants would be
needed in each condition in order to obtain a significant result, the colours category,
(t(78) = .31, p = .76, d = .05, power = .11) retrospective power analysis showed that
over 1,000 participants would be needed in each condition in order to obtain a
significant result, and the sayings category, (t(78) = .24, p = .81, d = .04, power = .11)
retrospective power analysis showed that over 1,000 participants would be needed in
each condition in order to obtain a significant result.
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13. Discussion
The main findings of the study were that there was no significant effect of recall
condition on the amount of correct information recalled, although the means showed
that the “tell only” group recalled the most. Age also had no significant effect on
recall and was not linked to recall in the drawing conditions. For instance, the 5 to 6
year olds were not found to recall significantly more information than the 3 to 4 year
olds either overall or in any of the recall conditions. The 5 to 6 year olds were found
to recall more actions compared to the 3 to 4 year olds, although this just missed
significance and, again, was not linked to the recall condition. Overall children were
found to recall objects more than actions and both objects and actions were recalled
significantly more than colours and sayings.
The findings showed that drawing did not aid recall, this refutes the findings of
studies conducted by Butler et al (1995), Gross and Hayne (1998, 1999), Jolley et al
(2002) and Rowlands and Cox (2002, 2003) who all found drawing significantly
improved recall. This may be due methodological differences, for instance Rowland
and Cox’s raters had the drawings to refer to as well as the transcripts, whereas this
study only used information that the children verbally reported. It is also apparent that
many of these studies used more direct questions (eg. Tell me about actions, objects,
colours etc.), this study used free recall only, it may be the case that direct questions
are required to give a sense of structure to the child’s recall. The findings, however,
support findings reported by Salmon and Pipe (2000), it may be the case that children
did not find the video to be particularly engaging in the same way that the children in
Salmon and Pipe’s study did not find the health check to be engaging. The study also
supports findings by Davison and Thomas (2001) to a degree as they found that
drawing significantly impaired recall in comparison to the tell only group.
Analyses indicated that there was no significant difference between the recall conditions.
The overall trend of the means, however, displayed some expected outcomes. In the 5 to 6
year olds age group, the ‘draw and tell’ and ‘draw then tell’ conditions gave the greatest
recall in comparison with the ‘tell only’ and ‘tell then draw and tell’ conditions. The 3 to
4 year olds, however displayed much the opposite effect, the ‘tell only’ condition gave the
highest recall here, where as the ‘draw and tell’ condition gave the lowest recall. There
was then a slight increase in the scores for the ‘draw then tell’ condition and recall
appeared to improve slightly in the ‘tell then draw and tell’ condition.
The fact that there was no significant difference for age is a rather surprising finding
as it was expected that there would be a difference due to differences in the levels of
cognitive development each age group would be at. This result, however, may due to
a lack of motivation to recall, it may have been the case that the children were eager
to get back to their lessons and not particularly interested in recalling the information.
This may also be the case for the initial video event, as children may not have been
paying close attention to the video in the first place. Therefore, this would cause
problems at the encoding stage rather than the retrieval stage, which in turn would
make the implementation of the drawing technique obsolete. It may be the case that
the ages of the children within the groups were closer together than expected. The 3 to
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14. 4 age group may have been comprised of mainly 4 year olds, whereas the 5 to 6 age
group may have been comprised of mainly 5 year olds. If this was the case then the
ages would be too similar to test because most of the children would be at roughly the
same stage in their development.
The almost significant difference for age and recall category, that older children
recalled more action information than younger children, along with the trend of scores
between the four recall conditions supports the idea put forward by Jolley et al (2002)
that drawing appears to have an inhibitory effect over young children’s memory. This
appears to be particularly strong when the child is verbally recalling the event whilst
simultaneously drawing what they can remember. This may be simply due to a lack of
the cognitive development which would allow older children to be able to conduct
both operations successfully. This inhibitory effect appears to be reduced when the
child recalls the event after they have drawn the picture. This reduction may be due to
the picture providing a visual cue for the child to use as a reference to guide their
account and prompt further detail. Although an inhibitory effect is reduced, there was
still less information being recalled compared to tell only for the younger age group.
This may be a product of the actual drawing process. It may be the case that whilst
one event is being drawn, the child may be forgetting what comes next as they may be
using too much ‘cognitive effort’ in the initial drawing process. It may also be the
case that older children gave greater detail here due to growing vocabulary and
understanding of verbs. This, in some respect, shows older children giving fuller
accounts, which is actually what was expected.
It was also found that there was a significant difference between recall scores within
the four recall categories. After further analysis was conducted, it was found that there
were differences across almost all recall categories. It was found that objects,
generated better recall scores than all other categories, actions showed better recall
than colours and sayings but not objects. This may be due to the fact that young
children are more likely to focus on the objects and actions as their language capacity
is still developing at these ages. The vast amounts of objects being recalled,
irrespective of the condition may be due the fact that there were much more objects
present in the video than information from any of the other three categories. It may
also the case that colours were not mentioned as much as children may not have been
aware that they needed to report the colours of the objects, this may be a result of the
free recall. Perhaps direct questions about colours would prompt greater recall in this
category. Furthermore, there was found to be no difference between colours and
sayings.
A major methodological flaw within this study was that there was often an overlap
between the draw and tell group and the draw then tell group. This was due to the fact
some of the children in the draw then tell group tended to give verbal recall whilst still
drawing. Conversely it was also noted that some children in the draw and tell group
did not begin to give verbal recall until they had finished their drawing. This may
have been the reason for the lack of difference between these 2 conditions. It may also
be the case that the children were reluctant to communicate with a male interviewer
with whom they were not familiar, this could have been combated by spending more
time the children perhaps helping them with their drawings in a few sessions prior to
the video event in order to achieve a rapport with the children.
14

15. The three day delay between the children being shown the video and being
subsequently interviewed may have been to long. It is possible to suggest that children
probably watch a lot of television in the evenings, particularly children’s shows like
the one showed to them in the video clip. It may be the case that the children were
confused between the shows they had watched in the evenings and the clip that was
shown to them in the study. It may be beneficial to show children the clip in the
morning and interview them later in the afternoon, in order to eliminate exposure to
other TV shows.
It may be the case that, due to the size of the groups, some children may have been
distracted from the video, which would directly affect the amount of information that
they could encode in the first place. It may be useful, in future, to show each child the
video individually in order to prevent distraction cause by other children which may
be in the room with them. Also, perhaps the instructions given to the children were
unclear about the fact that the purpose of the drawing task was to aid their recall. It
may have been the case that children believed the drawing to be a separate task from
the actual interview. This would cause the drawing task to become a form of
interference in itself.
Research has suggested that drawing only benefits recall if the child is a good drawer
(Rowlands and Cox, 2002), based on this claim, it may have been the case where
some children were not particularly good drawers. This may have served to inhibit
recall as the child may have been attempting to overcompensate for their lack of
drawing ability, this would have been cognitively demanding for the children. For
future research, this study could be replicated and the quality of the drawings could be
measure to see if there were any relationships there. However, if drawing is to be used
as an aid for children’s recall in a legal setting, this cannot be merely available to
those who are particularly skilled drawers. It may be useful to have the child tell the
interviewer what to draw and interviewer draws it for them to see if the picture they
create based on these accounts prompts further recall.
For future research, it may be useful to not only vary when the verbal recall takes
place, but also vary the drawing task. The means suggest the those in the 3 to 4 age
group did not appear to benefit from the drawing tasks as much as those in the 5 to 6
age group. Young children may find it difficult to include everything that they can
remember in just one picture, as a result of this, drawing may become a cognitive
burden in itself (Davison and Thomas, 2001) further studies could separate out the
drawing task so that in one group children draw one picture and in the other group
children draw a series of four drawings set out in a comic book fashion. This may help
structure their narrative about the event allowing them to view the pictures in
sequence rather than just as one big drawing of mixed up events. This may also help
alleviate the planning and monitoring difficulties of co-ordinating lots of information
in one drawing, freeing up cognitive processes required for verbal recall of the event.
To conclude, it is crucially important that more research be conducted in this area. It
would be unwise to take the findings of those studies which have found drawing to aid
children’s recall when there are so many studies which have found drawing to have no
beneficial effects on memory. This also applies for the converse; it may be the case
that these non-significant findings may be due to methodological errors. It is,
therefore, of great importance that further testing is conducted in order to establish a
15

16. methodology that will provide accurate, reliable results. As children’s recall can have
great implications in criminal cases whereby the child is the star witness, it is crucial
that methods implemented in order to prompt their recall are without doubt the most
effective method of providing accurate detailed information.
16

17. Word Count = 6,999 words.
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