Drawing facilitates children's verbal reports after long delays

The present study was designed to examine the effect of drawing on children 's verbal reports of a unique, past experience. Results of 2 experiments de monstrated that children who were given the opportunity to draw and tell, d uring a memory interview reported significantly more information than child ren merely asked to tell. This pattern of results occurred when children we re interviewed 1 day or 6 months after the target event and when children w ere reinterviewed 1 year after the event. Furthermore, the increase in the amount of information reported by children who were given the opportunity t o draw did not occur at the expense of accuracy. Findings suggest that draw ing may facilitate children's ability to talk about their past experiences in both clinical and legal contexts.