AUTISTIC CHILDREN AND ART THERAPY: AN ANALYSIS OF INFLUENCING FACTORS FROM CREATION TO PARTICIPATION

Abstract

This study explores the origin, development and theory of art therapy, with a special focus on the history of children's painting research. Art therapy helps emotional expression and communication through non-verbal means, including two orientations: psychoanalysis and art essentialism. Psychoanalysis focuses on the association and interpretation of artistic creation, while art essentialism emphasizes the role of the creative process in alleviating emotional conflicts. The study reviews the history of children's painting research and points out that analyzing painting characteristics can infer children's age, cognitive and emotional development, and help identify psychological abnormalities. Art education theory believes that children's artistic development is the result of the interaction of perception, material processing and creative ability, and appropriate teaching experience can improve children's visual art ability. The experimental part explores the guidance strategies for children's art creation in the graffiti period and the pre-stylization period. The results show that providing art materials and visual stimulation in the graffiti period can promote children's hand-eye coordination and physical development; the pre-stylization period emphasizes line drawing and movement coordination, and the value of the creative process is greater than the completion of the work. The study also found that graffiti activities promote the development of hand-eye coordination and visual perception, and the selection and application of art materials are crucial in artistic expression and emotional expression.