Presentation summary

As mental health issues are becoming increasingly prevalent due to an unstable socioeconomic context, there is a need for people to better track their emotions. Neurocognitive tests usually rely on questionnaires and monotonous tasks to assess emotions. In this preliminary work, we investigate the relevance of a new, more user-
friendly creative tool consisting of coloring a drawing to identify the five emotions according to Yin/Yang and the theory of the Five Elements.

Our drawings were produced using an original process that encourages people to be in the moment. To explore the potential of our approach, hobby coloring workshops were offered to people of different ages and health conditions during a stay in USA (Brignol TN, 2011).

The target groups were :
1) adults with mental deficiency, memory and age-related impairments, developmentaldisabilities,
2) healthy children and teens during craft activities at school.

Participants were asked to choose one of three drawings and color it, depending on their mood at the time. Possible colors were green (Wood Element), red (Fire Element), yellow (Earth Element), black (Water Element) and white corresponding to the uncolored parts of the paper (Metal Element).

Healthy young people generally used four colors, while older people with severe mental impairment chose only one or two.

Preliminary results suggest that the emotional state of healthy young people and older people with mentalhealth issues may be differentiated based on the number of chosen colors.

As future work, the theory of correspondence between colors and the Five Elements could be applied to identify the presence of specifice motions.

Generative Artificial Intelligence could be implemented to study the impact of different drawing parameters (e.g., curved vs straight line, color distribution). Promoting a multidisciplinary approach could pavethe way for more objective and systematic measurement of cognitive functions.