Dr. Unnur Guðrún Óttarsdóttir kennari og listmeðferðarfræðingur flytur netfyrirlesturinn Aukið minni og tilfinningaleg velferð með minnisteikningu. Tilefnið er niðurstöður minnisteiknirannsóknar sem birtar voru nýlega í opnum aðgangi í tímaritinu Education Sciences og í bókarkafla sem gefin var út hjá Routledge.
Rannsókn Unnar fólst í því að biðja 134 börn og 262 fullorðna að skrifa og teikna merkingu orða og rifja þau síðan upp eftir mislangan tíma. Í vísindagrein sem nefnist: Experiments on the Efficacy of Drawing for Memorization among Adults and Children with Varying Written Word Memory Capacities: A Two-Way Crossover Design, kemur fram að einstaklingar sem eiga auðvelt með að muna skrifuð orð muna að jafnaði meira af teiknuðum en skrifuðum orðum, þegar til lengri tíma er litið, samkvæmt niðurstöðum rannsóknarinnar. Einnig eiga einstaklingar sem eiga erfitt með að muna orð að jafnaði um 45 sinnum auðveldara að muna orðin með því að teikna merkingu þeirra þrem vikum áður í samanburði við að skrifa orðin.
Að sögn Unnar hefur teikning tilfinningalegt gildi, auk þess að vera áhrifarík minnistækni. Í tengdri rannsókn, sem kom út í kaflanum Memory drawing for children who have experienced stress and/or trauma and have specific learning difficulties, fundust sterkar vísbendingar um að teikning auðveldaði úrvinnslu tilfinninga sem tengjast erfiðri reynslu og/eða áföllum. Tifinnilngalegt öryggi er mikilvægur grunnur fyrir því að teikning nýtist til að auka námsárangur og tilfinningalega velferð. Í þessar tengdu rannsókn þróaði Unnur námslistmeðferð, þar sem listræn tjáning er notuð bæði í menntunar- og meðferðarlegum tilgangi.
Ýtarlegar upplýsingar um minnisteikningarannsóknina má finna í grein Unnar sem birtist á þessu ári í opnum aðgangi í tímaritinu Education Sciences, á vefslóðinni: https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050470.
Unnur mun flytja netfyrirlestrana um niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar:
Föstudaginn 10. janúar kl. 15.00-17.00
Föstudaginn 20. desember kl. 15:00–16:45
Fimmtudaginn 19. desember kl. 12.00-13.45
Heimildir:
Óttarsdóttir, U. G. 2024 Experiments on the Efficacy of Drawing for Memorization among Adults and Children with Varying Written Word Memory Capacities: A Two-Way Crossover Design. Education Sciences, 14(5), 470. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14050470
Óttarsdóttir, U. G. 2024 Memory drawing for children who have experienced stress and/or trauma and have specific learning difficulties. Í: M. Cao, R. Hougham and S. Scoble (Ristj.) Memory: shaping connections in the arts therapies (Kafli 8). Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Aðgangur er ókeypis og öllum opinn. Skráning er nauðsynleg hér fyrir neðan:
Mynd útgefin í: Óttarsdóttir, U. G. 2024 Memory drawing for children who have experienced stress and/or trauma and have specific learning difficulties. Í: M. Cao, R. Hougham and S. Scoble (Ristj.) Memory: shaping connections in the arts therapies (Kafli 8). Oxfordshire: Routledge.
The Faculty of Health, Business, and Natural Sciences at the University of Akureyri organized the Sjónaukinn conference, where Unnur presented a lecture titled "Joint Mirror Drawing to Facilitate Communication and Increase Well-being." The conference's theme was Innovation: Opportunities and Challenges. She shared the mirror drawing method's development, discovery, and application with the audience. At the end of the presentation, the audience drew and seemed to enjoy the creative process.
New research by Dr. Unnur Guðrún Óttarsdóttir on "Experiments on the Efficacy of Drawing for Memorization among Adults and Children with Varying Written Word Memory Capacities: A Two-Way Crossover Design," has been published in the "Education Sciences" journal (29 April 2024). For those who find it challenging to remember words, drawing them has been shown to make it generally about 45 times easier to remember in the long term.
Dr. Óttarsdóttir’s research consisted of asking 134 children and 262 adults to draw and write the meaning of words, and then to recall those words after varying time periods. New results provided by the study demonstrate that children and adults who struggle to remember written words, are the ones who benefit most from drawing for memorisation. The difference is so great that children in that group were generally able to recall their drawings about 45 times more easily than the words they had written three weeks earlier.
The full paper on the research, “Experiments on the Efficacy of Drawing for Memorization among Adults and Children with Varying Written Word Memory Capacities: A Two-Way Crossover Design,” was published in Education Science and can be viewed at https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/14/5/470/pdf.
Unnur participated in a conference about trauma and memory from an interdisciplinary perspective. The conference was hosted by the "London Center for Interdisciplinary Research." Unnur delivered the lecture "Memory Drawing for Children who Have Experienced Stress and/or Trauma and Have Specific Learning Difficulties" about her research on trauma, treatment, learning, and memory. She discussed how the children who participated in the research worked with their emotions relating to the trauma by drawing while memorizing coursework learning material through the same drawing. A child who participated in the research received 34 art therapy sessions, and his IQ increased by 16 points from the beginning to the end of the treatment. She also reviewed a study with 134 children which showed that the children who participated remembered words they drew nine weeks earlier, generally five times better than the words they wrote.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland, May 22, 2023 – Art Therapy Ottarsdottir, provider of a method where artistic expression is used for both therapy and education, today announced that its founder Dr. Unnur Ottarsdottir, a global pioneer of the art educational therapy method – was honored to teach a seminar at Art Therapy Italiana and invited to give a keynote speech at the ninth annual Lab Talento International Conference, at the University of Pavia in Italy. Ottarsdottir covered topics such as memory drawing, emotional processing through art making, writing-images, and the importance of artistic expression in education.
A landmark study conducted by Ottarsdottir in 2000, was the first comprehensive research project that systematically compared the impact of drawing and writing on memory functions. Participants were asked to draw the content of certain words and write other words down. Results showed that people were able to remember their drawings as much as five times more than when they wrote words down, nine weeks after the original memorization. Ottarsdottir has also spent years researching art educational therapy, a method where artistic expression is used for therapeutic and educational purposes - connecting emotional processing and children's learning through drawing.
LabTalento, the Italian Laboratory of Research and Development of Potential, Talent and Intellectual Giftedness, sponsors the yearly event to share current Italian and international research for professionals working with the gifted. Ottarsdottir’s keynote lecture at the conference was attended mainly by psychologists and teachers who took part in a drawing and writing exercise to demonstrate the difference between memorization by drawing and writing. “I was pleased with the results which showed half of the participants at the keynote lecture remembered their drawings more than written words, and almost half remembered them equally. Only one remembered their written words more,” said Ottarsdottir.
Additionally, Ottarsdottir delivered the seminar "Art Therapy and Learning: Educational Art Therapy" at Art Therapy Italiana to school art therapists. Along with memory drawing, which again facilitates memory and the processing of emotions, Ottarsdottir introduced basic concepts of her art educational therapy method. The seminar and lecture also explored the possibilities of memory drawing in helping with the processing of vulnerable and complex emotions related to trauma.
“I practice art therapy daily in my private practice. I see mostly children and many of them have been traumatized, for example by the death of a parent. Some of the children also have specific learning difficulties. I also supervise both teachers and art therapists,” Ottarsdottir said. “As an art therapist, I am frequently amazed by the transformative potential inherent in artistic expression and the therapeutic relationship”.
Ottarsdottir received a doctoral degree from the University of Hertfordshire in 2006, and a Master’s in Art Therapy from the Pratt Institute in 1991, along with her B.Ed. from Iceland College of Education in 1986. She also holds a BA and Master’s in Visual Art. She founded Art Therapy Ottarsdottir in 1991 where she serves as director, art therapist, teacher and supervisor. She has also worked with a variety of institutions and organizations, including the Reykjavik Academy where she follows academic pursuits such as research and writing.
Ottarsdottir has published articles and book chapters and taught at universities internationally. An article about her research "Processing Emotions and Memorising Coursework through Memory Drawing" was published in ATOL: Art Therapy OnLine. Lastly, she serves in the steering group of the Research Committee of The European Federation of Art Therapy (EFAT).
Image info, from left:
Camelia Corlatanu, medical doctor, art therapist, Italian translator at the seminar
Unnur Ottarsdottir, PhD, art therapist, artist, teacher, lecturer, researcher, tutor at the seminar
Mimma Della Cagnoletta, art therapist, psychoanalyst, artist, founder of Art Therapy Italiana
It was a pleasure to talk to Guðrún Gunnarsdóttir and Gunnar Hansson on the „Mannlega (e. Humanly) The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service last week. The introduction to the radio shows states: "Ottarsdottir’s 2000 study was the first comprehensive research project that systematically compared the impact of drawing and writing on memory functions. In short, the results showed that nine weeks later, the children generally remembered five times more drawings than words they had written. This is called memory drawing. This May, Unnur taught a seminar in Italy for art therapists working in schools The topics that were on the agenda were, for example, memory drawing, writing-images, the importance of artistic expression in education, and she was also invited to deliver a lecture in Italy. Unnur came to the radio show today."
Radio Show at the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service
Unnur gave the lecture "Non-verbal connection, communication, and mirroring through joint mirror drawing in art therapy and museums" at a conference in Riga that was about "Growing Together" and held at the Art Academy of Latvia by The European Federation of Art Therapy (EFAT). The lecture was about her "Reflection" artwork, which she has used in both art therapy and her artwork. Unnur discussed, among other things, how the mirroring facilitated by "Reflection" contributes to strengthening the sense of self and connection with others.
I had a great time in Vilnius last week where I attended the conference "MEMORY: Shaping Connections in the Arts Therapies". A variety of interesting topics were revealed at the conference, like how women e.g. in Africa, who have been abused, come together to embroider and tell their stories which empowers them so that they can move from being victims to continuing with their lives and participating in society (tutor: Tally Tripp from the US). I gave the lecture "Processing Emotions and Memorising Coursework through Memory Drawing" where I discussed how children can express deep and difficult memories through drawings and how extremely effective drawing is for memorizing.
Vilnius is a beautiful city; the people are friendly and the food is good. It was a pleasure to be there last week with about 200 arts therapists from all over the world.
This morning I gave the lecture "Art therapy and memory drawing for children who have specific learning difficulties and have been traumatized and/or experienced high stress" at Landspitali- The National University Hospital of Iceland, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (BUGL). Some of the participants were present and others took part online. It was really rewarding to talk about my research and therapeutic work with the hospital staff who seemed to have a good understanding of the topic.
I also had the opportunity to look at the art therapists studio who work at BUGL, they are Íris Ingvarsdóttir, Katín Erna Gunnarsdóttir and Carolina Kindler.
Rán Jónsdóttir and Ólöf Benediktsdóttir and I opened the exhibition “Colourohm” in The Icelandic Printmakers Association gallery today. The topics of the exhibition are sound, colours and emotions. It was a pleasure to share my work “Coloured feelings“ with the audience, who added to the work through their participation, which included sharing feelings in colours. Thank you all for coming and participating.
The exhibition runs until August 20. All welcome.
