Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty in social interaction, communicating with others, and improving self-understanding. Since there is a limit to the expression of languages, clarifying whether self-expression by drawing can provide awareness of themselves may provide hints for improving self-understanding.

In this workshop, I asked individuals with ASD to draw pictures with a drawing app to see if they could be deepen aware of themselves. Participants are adults who do not draw pictures on a daily basis and are not accustomed to use drawing apps. The purpose was to have them experience interaction with others through their art works and group work and to discover about themselves through the workshop.

They used ibis Paint X to paint with a method called “self-drawing.” After drawing the picture, they wrote “changes in feelings and moods before, during, and after drawing,” “thoughts during drawing,” and “difficulties.” In pair work, they discussed impressions of drawing a picture and explanations of the art work. Next, they explained an art work of each other to everyone. In addition, they wrote out “associative words” from the art work and I asked them to decide the important order of the words and the impression of plus or minus. They wrote down “what I noticed from the associative words” and “what I noticed about my feelings, thoughts, and characteristics” and discussed them with everyone. Finally, we all discussed what we noticed from the opinions of others and what we learned from self-expression.

Eight to 21 associative words were described for each, and some of people had the pluses and minuses were classified in a well-balanced manner, while others had no minuses or pluses, and contrasting results were obtained. What they noticed from the art works and associative words was that “the art work incluses many stuffs I’m so interested recently”, “I can’t lie to the art work. My element is appearing,” “I see myself critically, for better or for worse,” and so on.

As for what they noticed from the art works and opinions of others, there were comments such as “The personality, hobbies, and thoughts of others were well communicated” and “I felt that I could communicate deeper with others than using just words.” It was suggested that the interaction was created through the art works, and that it was noticed by others’ art works and comments and led to discoveries about oneself.

Since the workshop was the first attempt to study my doctoral dissertation, I conducted it with IRB approval of the University of Tokyo (# 21-221).