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The factor analytic structure of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children: a comparison of the standardization sample with a sample of chronically ill children.

A confirmatory principal component factor analysis of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children was conducted using the standardization sample and a sample of chronically ill children. An interpretation of three- and four-factor solutions identified the three-factor solution as superior to the four-factor solution as measured by chi-square goodness of fit and coefficients of convergence. A cluster analysis using Ward's minimum variance method was calculated to determine the typical profiles that best describe the chronically ill sample. Results of this analysis reveal two distinct profiles that differ primarily on the level of adaptive psychological functioning.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Identification of women at risk for unwanted pregnancy.

Concern about increasing rates of unwanted pregnancy, particularly among adolescents, has led to consideration of steps necessary to develop effective intervention programs. In order to reach a young woman for counseling and contraceptive assistance before she places herself at risk for unintended pregnancy, it seems necessary to develop the capability for identifying high-risk individuals without reference to sexual history. The authors describe a preliminary attempt to predict contraceptively unprotected coitus from responses to projective test stimuli, noting that the problem is so urgent that even early and necessarily incomplete work in this area may have merit in stimulating further research in identification of women at risk for unwanted pregnancy.

Adolescent↗

Comparison of Egyptian and Canadian children on a picture apperception test.

Individualism-collectivism theory predicted that Egyptian and Canadian children's performance would differ on relevant scales of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children (RATC). The RATC was administered to 34 Egyptian and 34 Canadian children ages 6-13 years. Canadian children scored higher on autonomy and lower on receiving support from others and parental limit setting. At older ages, Egyptian children manifested less rejection, desire for help from others, and aggression. There were no cultural differences in anxiety or depression and few differences on indicator and resolution scales related to understanding the task and resolving problems. The findings validated cross-cultural use of the RATC and demonstrated that the increasingly general theory of collectivism allowed meaningful predictions about personality and clinical traits.

Adolescent↗

[Method of studying psychotherapeutic resistance during the conduct of hypnotic sessions for neurotic patients].

The available methods of determination of hypnosis liability are restricted to investigation of the possibility of suggestion of motor acts, various sensations, etc., and cannot provide an answer as to suggestibility with regard to the patient's ability to change his or her opinions under the effect of direct therapeutic hypnosis. In this connection the author proposes an experimental-psychological method of determining this suggest ability with the help of TAT pictures. This technique of examination has been tested in 53 neurotic patients. It allows the differentiation of patients who get into a hypnotic state fairly easily but show complete resistance to direct therapeutic suggestions. It is necessary, therefore, to elucidate the origin of such resistance, to find ways for its control, and also to seek for other ways of psychotherapeutic impact.

Humans↗

Administrator's gender and sexual content in projective test protocols.

The present data for the TAT and previous results for the word-association test and Rorschach support the hypothesis that the E-S gender combinations affect sexual responsivity on projective tests. The evidence indicates that like-gender combinations are more sexually responsive than opposite-gender pairs on projective tests. Further, there may be an overall rank-ordering of gender pairs in the degree of sexual responsivity, with the male E-female S combination resulting in the lowest sex content scores. The extent of generality of the phenomena on Ss other than a "normal" population remains to be investigated.

Female↗

The course of individual adaptation to life changes.

The study of internal processes of adaptation to external life changes is presented as a concrete approach to studying one kind of person--situation interaction. Theoretical and empirical descriptions of the course of emotional adaptation to changes and reviewed. The empirical derivation and cross-validation of a measure of four stances in a sequence of emotional adaptation to the external environment are described. Then, the validity of the notion that life changes stimulate emotional adaptation is tested in a separate study comparing college freshmen and seniors. Results indicate that freshman are concerned with issues characteristic of earlier developmental stances and seniors with later ones. The relevance and benefits of this general approach and specific methodology for the study of personality and adult development are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Effects of drinking on the power and affiliation needs of middle-aged females.

Power and affiliation motivation was measured among 37 middle-aged females before and after consumption of alcohol in a familiar social setting. The results indicated that, contrary to the findings reported for males, n power and personal power motives declined significantly among moderate-drinking female Ss. Although social power needs increased at all tested levels of alcohol consumption, these increases did not reach statistical significance. Contrary to expectation, affiliation needs declined significantly after only moderate drinking. These results cast some doubt upon the applicability to females of the McClelland, et al. approach for treatment of alcoholism.

Adult↗

Motivational syndromes associated with natural killer cell activity.

This article reports three studies that taken together support two hypotheses: (a) that the stressed power motivation syndrome is associated with relatively low natural killer cell activity (NKCA) and (b) that the unstressed affiliation motivation syndrome is associated with higher NKCA. In Study 1, college students who were relatively high in stressed power motivation had significantly lower NKCA than did their peers. In addition, students high in unstressed affiliation motivation had significantly greater NKCA than did those showing less evidence of this syndrome. Study 2 replicated these findings on a sample of middle-class men. In Study 3, which tested the hypotheses among adult patients from a Health Maintenance Organization, results were in the same direction but less significant. Meta-analyses clearly indicate that the combined evidence from the three studies reliably supports both hypotheses.

Adult↗

Symbiosis and confirmation between the parents of the schizophrenic.

Parents of schizophrenics (N = 17) were compared with parents of nonschizophrenic hospitalized patients (N = 14) and parents of normals (N = 15) on the degree of symbiotic enmeshment and confirmation of individuality in the parental relationship. Symbiosis was divided into six component variables: undifferentiation, dependency, intervention, disapproval of other relationships, separation difficulty, and injunctions. Confirmation was bifurcated into acknowledgment and accommodation. Projective tests (TAT and Make-A-Picture-Story) and interviews were used to measure both variables. The results suggest that mothers of schizophrenics tend to be symbiotically attached to their husbands and view their husbands as forming the same type of attachment to them. Fathers of schizophrenics do not tend to be symbiotically involved with their wives but fail to confirm them. The implications of the results for the family system of the schizophrenic are discussed.

Fathers↗

A global psychosomatic study of 16 consecutive patients with ulcerative colitis.

The author reports the results of a global psychosomatic study conducted upon a consecutive series of 16 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), by means of an anamnestic biographic interview plus a projective test (TAT) in association with the usual clinical research applied. The most significant data deal with: the relationship with parental figures during infancy; the 'changes' in life during the period which preceded the clinical onset of UC; the presence of a latent or manifest depressive condition; the alexithymic characteristics; the lack of 'intermediate sphere'; the correlation between the reactivation of UC and certain environmental situations; the defence mechanisms; the type of object relationship.

Adolescent↗

Verbal expression of affect in rheumatoid arthritis patients. A blind, controlled test for alexithymia.

The claim that alexithymia is associated with specific disease categories is subjected to empirical testing. We report results from a controlled, single blind study in which Thematic Aperception Test (TAT) protocols from 64 arthritis patients attending an outpatient clinic were examined for operationally defined characteristics of alexithymia. We studied two groups of rheumatoid arthritis patients, one with the combination of rheumatoid factor and erosive joint changes and the other without and a third group with other forms of arthritis. Controlling for all variables that may confound alexithymia, we were unable to find any relationship between alexithymia and diagnostic subgroup, duration of illness or functional impairment.

Adult↗

Comparing diagnostic validity of the TAT and a new picture projective test.

Diagnostic validity of the TAT and a new picture projective test, the PPT, were compared for normal, depressed, and psychotic subjects. Generally, the PPT elicited more positive emotional tone, more activity, and fewer thematic deviations than the TAT. The PPT and TAT were essentially equal in the capacity to discriminate between stories of normal and depressed subjects; however, the PPT was superior in differentiating psychotics from normals and depressives. On the PPT, depressives told stories with gloomier emotional tone and psychotics made more perceptual distortions, thematic and interpretive deviations. None of these differences were apparent on the TAT. The PPT pictures seem to have more diagnostic validity than the TAT stimuli.

Bipolar Disorder↗

Motive congruence and interpersonal identity status.

This article examines the relationship between interpersonal ego identity formation and congruence of self-attributed and implicit affiliation motives. A TAT-type picture-story test, the Personality Research Form, and the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were administered to 177 participants to assess data on affiliation motivation and interpersonal identity formation. According to a scoring system developed by Winter, the picture stories were coded for need for Affiliation. Analyses revealed that motive congruence is significantly associated with participants' level of identity achievement and identity foreclosure in the interpersonal domain. Such a relationship could not be identified for identity diffusion and moratorium.

Achievement↗

The effects of priming on children's attitudes toward older individuals.

The purpose of the present research was to examine younger (7-years-old) and older (10-years-old) children's attitudes toward older individuals following one type of five primes: positive prime, negative prime, elderly prime, grandparent prime, or neutral prime. Overall, children's attitudes on three tests--Apperception, Semantic Differential, and Attribute Salience--were affected by the type of prime children were given, with positive and grandparent primes resulting in more positive views toward older individuals than negative, elderly, or neutral (control group) primes. The present research provides evidence that priming the most accessible cognitions about an individual can affect even young children's perception of the individual. These results are discussed in terms of category-based and data-driven processing and may explain the disparate findings obtained in previous studies that have shown the children's attitudes toward older individuals are sometimes negative, whereas other studies have shown that children's attitudes are more positive or neutral.

Adult↗

The relationship between alcohol intoxication and power in real-life non-alcoholic couples.

Thirty real life couples were randomly assigned to one of three groups, a control group, a men drink group (only men drinking alcohol), or a women drink group (only women drinking alcohol). The purpose was to test whether alcohol intoxication leads to shifts in power among men and women using an estimation task together with a measure of power fantasies. Men were more powerful in terms of outcome both in the control group and the women drink group, but women became more powerful when men drink. Responsibility aspects of the process follow this pattern and the process becomes more complex when women drink. Men over-estimate their influence especially as far as process is concerned. Power fantasies decrease for both men and women only when women drink. It is suggested that sex role stereotyping can explain the findings.

Adult↗

[Autonomy and separation dynamics of students].

A specific group, the patients of our Psychological Counselling Institute for students, was examined by means of a described projective test method. Essential subjects of dynamic forces of separation and autonomy in the late adolescent process of development could be proved and made evident. Obviously there is a distinctive need of separation and autonomy. On the way to autonomy there are barriers such as ambivalence, sense of guilt and deep fear of separation and loss in every dimension as far as suicide. Depressions may differ from the so-called adolescent-specific normative light depression, which suggests more likely to the fact of self-development. Getting to autonomy resp. the mastering of separation is the result of a described specific process of development.

Adolescent↗

Defense use and defense understanding in children.

This study investigated the relation between children's use of defense mechanisms and their understanding of those defenses. We hypothesized that, once a child understands how a particular defense functions, the use of that defense will no longer be successful and will be replaced by another defense mechanism that is not yet understood. Defense use was assessed from the Thematic Appreception Test (TAT) stories told by 122 children; defense understanding was determined from the children's understanding of stories portraying defenses. The results indicated that younger children (mean age = 7-8) used the defense of denial more than the older children (mean age = 9-11). Older children understood the functioning of denial and projection better than the younger children. A comparison of children who did and did not understand a defense showed that younger children who understood the functioning of denial were less likely to themselves use denial. Likewise, older children who understood the functioning of projection were less likely to use this defense.

Child↗

Induced anxiety, defensive style, and performance on the TAT.

The effects of both situationally induced anxiety and defensive style upon TAT performance were investigated in a college student population. Twenty students were given the TAT under anxiety-arousing conditions, while another 20 subjects were tested under non-anxiety-arousing conditions. The separate anxiety measures utilized were total number of words, preludes to stories, outcomes to stories, combined preludes and outcomes, perceptual repression, and overall psychopathology. Situationally induced anxiety significantly affected subjects' performance; their stories contained more words, more preludes, more outcomes and more combined preludes and outcomes than stories obtained under non-anxiety-arousing conditions. Repressors gave more outcomes to their stories than did sensitizers. While anxiety-arousing conditions did produce these outward changes in story format, the dimensions of perceptual repression and overall story quality were unaffected. Hence, situationally induced anxiety changed the more outward aspects of subjects' performance without affecting measures of their underlying psychopathology.

Adolescent↗