Haiblum-Itskovitch Shai, Czamanski-Cohen Johanna, Galili Giora
Emili Sagol Creative Arts Therapies Research Center, School of Creative Arts Therapies, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jun 18;9:968. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00968. eCollection 2018.
Art therapy encourages the use of art materials to express feelings and thoughts in a supportive environment. Art materials differ in fluidity and are postulated to thus differentially enhance emotional response (the more fluid the material the more emotion elicited). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, this assumption has not been empirically tested. The current study aimed to examine the emotional and physiological responses to art-making with different art materials. We were particularly interested in vagal activity, indexed by heart rate variability (HRV), because of its association with numerous health related outcomes. In this study, 50 adults (mean age 33 ± 10.27 years, 52% males) participated in a repeated measures experiment, in which they were requested to draw with three art materials (order randomized) differing in their level of fluidity (pencil, oil-pastels, and gouache paint) intermittent with periods of music. We measured the emotional response to art-making with each material using a self-report measure and matrices of HRV using a wearable electrocardiogram device. We calculated two indices of HRV, one indicative of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity, and one indicative of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. Art-making with gouache paint and oil-pastels resulted in improved positive mood, while pencil did not. Art-making explained approximately 35% of the variability in parasympathetic reactivity, which may indicate changes in emotional regulation processes during the art-making task. Yet, fluidity was not sufficient to explain the reaction to art-making. Surprisingly, the largest suppression of PNS and augmentation of the SNS occurred during art-making with oil-pastels and not with Gouache. Moreover, PNS and SNS reactivity to oil-pastels were related to emotional valance, which may point to emotional engagement. We can conclude that art-making with oil-pastels, first created in Japan in 1924 to increase self-expression of students, results in a unique emotional and physiological responses. These findings might be explained by the enhanced tactile experience of art-making with oil-pastels along with their relative fluidity, triggering an arousal pattern. Further studies that take the format and presentation of the materials as well as the content of the artwork, into account, are needed.
艺术疗法鼓励在支持性环境中使用艺术材料来表达情感和想法。艺术材料在流动性方面存在差异，据推测，它们会因此以不同方式增强情绪反应（材料流动性越强，引发的情绪就越多）。然而，据我们所知，这一假设尚未经过实证检验。当前研究旨在考察使用不同艺术材料进行艺术创作时的情绪和生理反应。我们对通过心率变异性（HRV）来衡量的迷走神经活动特别感兴趣，因为它与众多健康相关结果存在关联。在本研究中，50名成年人（平均年龄33±10.27岁，52%为男性）参与了一项重复测量实验，实验要求他们使用三种流动性不同的艺术材料（顺序随机）进行绘画（铅笔、油画棒和水粉颜料），期间穿插音乐时段。我们使用自我报告测量法测量了对每种材料进行艺术创作时的情绪反应，并使用可穿戴心电图设备测量了HRV矩阵。我们计算了两个HRV指标，一个表示副交感神经系统（PNS）活动，另一个表示交感神经系统（SNS）活动。用水粉颜料和油画棒进行艺术创作能改善积极情绪，而用铅笔则不能。艺术创作解释了副交感神经反应性中约35%的变异性，这可能表明在艺术创作任务过程中情绪调节过程发生了变化。然而，流动性不足以解释对艺术创作的反应。令人惊讶的是，PNS的最大抑制和SNS的增强发生在使用油画棒进行艺术创作时，而非使用水粉颜料时。此外，PNS和SNS对油画棒的反应性与情绪效价有关，这可能表明存在情绪投入。我们可以得出结论，1924年在日本首次发明的用于增强学生自我表达的油画棒艺术创作会产生独特的情绪和生理反应。这些发现可能是由于油画棒艺术创作增强的触觉体验及其相对流动性引发了一种唤醒模式。需要进一步开展研究，将材料的形式和呈现方式以及艺术作品的内容考虑在内。
