For a senior thesis project, psychology major Jenny Sadler has put a fresh spin on an old cliché — the one about a picture being worth a thousand words.

Sadler is investigating photography's therapeutic potential for adults with developmental disabilities. She has asked clients at a Lewiston mental health services facility to use cameras to respond to questions about their lives. She and the photographers then talk about the images.

"It’s interesting to see what people take when you say, 'Take pictures of things that make you happy,' " says Sadler, of Stow, Mass. "Family’s important to them, friends, food — they share the same interests as us, and classifying them by their disability first and as a person second is a real problem."

The practice that Sadler uses is called "photovoice." It's a means of giving voice to people who would otherwise not be heard due to barriers of language or awkwardness about an issue. "It’s a more sensitive way" of communicating, Sadler says, "where the participant is completely in control of what they tell you."

In a second component of her thesis, Sadler is assessing the value of language-learning software as a tool for people with learning disabilities. "With both, she is trying to expand the communicative capacities of these adults so their social isolation might be eased," says her adviser, Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro.

For her thesis, Sadler says, "it was really important not to spend an entire year on a project that I didn’t feel would help anyone."