Search

The present report deals with the validity of the Shipley-Hartford Retreat Scale as a brief paper-and-pencil measure of current intellectual functioning. Although the Shipley-Hartford scale was devised primarily as a scale to reflect intellectual deficit, and its subsequent evaluation has indicated limited utility as a measure of deterioration, several investigators have been interested in its usefulness as a measure of functioning intelligence. This paper presents a table that summarizes some relationships between various brief measures of intelligence and the Wechsler Bellevue Scales.

The article focuses on research papers of clinical psychology. It informs that the same definition of research was applied in culling these journals; papers were included in the survey if they presented systematic investigation of a specifically described group of subjects and the derivation of normative or comparative data from psychometrics, case histories, or therapeutic interviews; or analysis of administration, scoring, and interpretation of a given instrument. It further informs that it is necessary to recognize, however, that changes in editorial policy of certain of the journals have resulted in the acceptance for publication of a larger number of shorter papers.

The article discusses various psychometric techniques useful in vocational guidance. One of the psychometric techniques is known as pre-test. The pre-test is an instrument, usually paper and pencil, designed to give a rough measure of the subject's mental level in a very short period of time. Another useful psychometric technique identified is the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale. This test gives a measure of verbal and non-verbal intelligence as well as an overall measure and seems to provide satisfactory differentiation at all levels of intelligence.

The article discusses how a clinician is a behavioral scientist. It is the thesis of this paper that whatever a clinical psychologist does, whether diagnosis, therapy, or teaching, he does his work properly only because he is a research worker. At present there seems to be a trend away from meticulous diagnostic work. In the face of this, it should be pointed out that only through diagnostic effort, that is, psychological measurement, can the clinician set his goal in therapy, and more importantly, know when this therapeutic goal has been reached.

The article discusses the validity of clinical judgments of schizophrenic pathology-based on verbal responses to intelligence test items. The reliability of clinical judgment has been the subject of a series of studies using single responses to intelligence test items obtained from psychiatric patients and judgments by trained clinicians based on a seven-point rating scale. It has been possible to demonstrate reliability in judgments of disorganization in schizophrenic thinking, as well as more specific aspects of schizophrenic thinking. The question now arises whether clinicians can make global appraisals of complete test protocols with as great reliability as they can judge single test items. This paper extends the study of reliability, defined as interjudge agreement, to global judgments in which whole protocols are ranked according to severity of schizophrenic pathology.

This paper studies the efficacy of the Pain Apperception Test as a research tool by investigating the consistency of individual response as to pain apperception, neuroticism, manifest anxiety, and self-appraisal. The research design involved the PAT, a medical questionnaire, Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, and a pain experience questionnaire. Data from responses to these instruments permitted studying the relationship of pain apperception to personality characteristics, and to subjects' ratings of their comparative past pain experience. Relationships also were examined regarding the comparative apperception of pain in the counterpart PAT pictures, thus investigating Anticipation versus Felt-Sensation.

The article informs that the selection and validation of criteria to measure psychotherapeutic experience are important problems in current research. In an increasing number of studies the utility of psychological tests as guides to selection of suitable patients for psychotherapy is being investigated. Although the validation of such tests rests, to a large degree, upon the adequate measurement of the success or failure of the patient's therapeutic experience, insufficient research has been directed towards this area. The present paper reports on an empirical investigation of the relationship between the manner in which therapy is terminated and length of treatment and training and experience of the therapist.

The article informs that drawings of a "Man" have frequently been used for estimating the mental level of children and subnormal or abnormal adults. Correlations with objective intelligence tests have at times been high. On the other hand there is much evidence that correlations are often so low as to 1e of little help in practical work and hence the drawing has been frowned on as an emergency test for quick assessment of mental level. This paper has attempted to demonstrate that under certain circumstances the drawing of a "man" predicts with reasonable accuracy the Wechsler non-verbal intelligence level of certified mental defectives.

The article discusses individual bias in psychological reports. There has been considerable study of the relationship between the examiner and subject during conventional test administration and of the influence of the examiner upon the subject's responses in a variety of testing situations. Individual differences in examiners' processing data secured from the use of projective techniques have also been studied and reports are beginning to appear about the influence of the personality of the examiner on his reports about subjects. The present paper is a report of a study designed to examine the systematic variation in the content of psychologists' reports and their individual biases. The subjects were three graduate students in psychology who were serving their internship-training year at Duke Hospital a few years ago.

This article focuses on an alternate form of the Series Completion test. The Series Completion test, requires that the subject form abstractions from visually presented problems and use these abstractions to complete a series. Since practice effect on this test may play a role in repeated testing, as, for example, in follow up studies of electro-convulsive. shock or prefrontal lobotomy in which several testings may be given-an alternate form has been developed, by use of which it is hoped to tap the same abilities now measured by Series Completion I. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the alternate form, Series Completion II, and to present tentative norms for the evaluation of results.

The article reports on Masculinity-Femininity scales. Masculinity-Femininity "scales," abbreviated MF, are found in several widely used psychological tests including the Strong Interest Blank and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the rationale for defining M F and to summarize the two statistical studies of it. There are two procedures possible in constructing an MF scale. One may either weight a given number of responses in such a way that they maximally discriminate the sexes, or one may search for entirely new responses which, when so weighted, will give some optimum discrimination. MF may be derived as the continuous variable which best represents the discrete variable, Male-Female. The mathematical problem of abstracting any test scale has a unique solution once the pool of discriminating responses has been chosen.

The article cites the study to approach the adult female obese personality through the use of the Rorschach test. The authors' plan is (1) to determine if there are reliable and differentiating Rorschach quantitative indices which characterize the personality structure of obese women as contrasted with women within the ideal weight range, (2) to determine the degree in which these differentiating indices are present, and (3) to attempt to reconstruct a pattern of psychic-economic distribution of personality energy typical of the personality structure of obese women. Later papers will treat nuclear conflicts and crucial relationships in the personality of obese women as reflected in other projective techniques.

The article focuses on a comparison of personality test scores and medical psychiatric diagnosis by the inverted factor techniques which is concerned with a population of n individuals each of whom has been measured by m tests. The author administered four paper and pencil personality tests including the Bernreuter Personality Inventory, the Bell Adjustment Inventory, the Guilford Martin Series, and the Minnesota Multiphasic inventory to twenty five neuropsychiatric patients at a the Mare Island Naval Hospital in northern California. It was found that the symptomatology of the cases on each factor--both negatively and positively loaded cases--were similar enough to make tentative interpretation.

The article reports that one of the major clinical developments of the past decade has been the attempt to derive methods of personality diagnosis from the scatter and proffle analysis of psychometric data. Following the initial reports suggesting that scatter and profile might have differential diagnostic significance, many clinical psychologists attempted to interpret psychometrics according to the new-found "signs." Unfortunately, subsequent research has failed to confirm the validity of these diagnostic signs. The present paper represents an attempt to evaluate the rationale of scatter and profile analysis of psychometric data with specific reference to published research on personality diagnosis with the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale for Adults.

The article reports that not many years ago, Rorschach's test was conceived largely as a diagnostic instrument, and it was common knowledge that one did not cure patients merely by diagnosing their disorder. The present paper offers the suggestion that certain of the so-called projective tests may be employed in such a manner that their use will have a distinct psychotherapeutic effect. This psychotherapeutic effect is to be considered as the primary purpose for which the particular projective technique is to be used, the relative value of this particular form of therapy is to be used.

The article examines the Sargent Test. Sargent has recently made an attempt to incorporate the principles of projective methods into a group paper-and-pencil personality test, thus combining the administrative advantages of a written test with the diagnostic value of a projective technique. The theory and principles which lie behind this Test of Insight into Human Motives are reviewed. The present study seeks to investigate the Sargent test to further examine the reliability of the test; and to develop a simpler scoring system. The subjects were women from the beginning psychology classes at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1945, who volunteered for "a simple written experiment in connection with the study of group tendencies in college students."

The article focuses on the usefulness of a particular approach to Rorschach perception. The present paper replicates researchers R.S. Steffy and W.C. Becker's findings dealing with specific Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) scores and in so doing used an exit sample which permitted the determination of the correlations after some degree of remission had occurred. The sample was composed of 48 men under 59 years of age who left the hospital on trial visit or discharge with maximum hospital benefit after treatment for schizophrenic reaction.

This paper examines variations in psychophysiological symptom scores for wives of alcoholics in contrasting periods of abstinence and drinking. Much of the applicable literature has stressed that these wives unconsciously want to maintain their husbands' active alcoholism and are very resistant to treatment efforts. It has also been stated that many of these women are apt to develop compensatory symptoms of disturbance if their spouses achieve sobriety. The women in all four comparison groups revealed less symptoms when their husbands were abstaining, with no major differences between those wives with currently drinking spouses and those whose husbands were currently abstaining.

The article reports on figure location in student and patient samples. Clinicians frequently attribute projective significance to the page location of drawings. Karen Machover interprets left placement as self orientated, while the right of the page signifies the environment. The top is related to optimism, and the lower portion to depression. The results of this experiment contradict the hypothesis that productions of geometric figures evoked in relatively unstructured situations have potential for differentiating populations varying across several parameters. Fifty hospitalized veterans and 47 college students were instructed to draw horizontal and vertical lines, a circle, square, and triangle on standard white bond paper. With the exception of the circle placement, the groups show marked similar preference for utilization of the upper left portion of the page. The importance of common learned behavior in limiting the range of "dynamically" determined choices is discussed.

The article reports on Knox Cube Backward (KCB) as a performance test of general intelligence. The Knox Cube test may be administered backwards as well as forwards, and this paper reports some preliminary results of its use as a performance test of general intelligence. A search of the literature did not discover any references to the Knox Cube Backward (KCB). However, there are many studies with Knox Cube Forward (KCF), originally devised by H. A. Knox in his study of suspected mental defective immigrants at Ellis Island. The Knox Cube Backward (KCB), a revision of the Knox Cube test, was administered to one hundred normal children who had a mean age of 78 months and a mean IQ of 120.4. The reliability coefficient of KCB was found to be .88.

This article describes the techniques of taking individual psychological tests. In the individual test situation the examiner will first present the subject with the form sheet folded so that only page 2 is visible and so that the word "House" is at the top of the page from the subject's point of view. The examiner will say to the subject, "Take one of these pencils please. I want you to draw me as good a picture of a house as you can. You may draw any kind of house you wish, it's entirely up to you. You may erase as much as you like, it wilt not be counted against you. And you may take as long as you wish. Just draw me as good a house as you can."

The article discusses the comparative sensitivity of the qualitative and quantitative Porteus maze scores to drug effects. In a series of papers, summarized in the most recent test manual, S.D. Porteus has shown that quantitative scores on the Maze Test decline under the administration of chlorpromazine. No data are presented with regard to drug effects on the qualitative scores. Qualitative scores represent a weighted coding of ongoing expressive movement exhibited in the course of completing the mazes. As qualitative maze scores are related to maze difficulty, repetition of the mazes should result in a decline of qualitative scores with a corresponding decline in range of variation. Any factor increasing the number of qualitative errors should also increase the possible range of variation. Individual differences in drug response should also increase the range of variation. It was therefore postulated that variance changes should be more sensitive to drug effects than mean changes.

The article informs that the appearance of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale makes it desirable to ascertain as quickly as possible the quantitative relationships which may be expected between the new instrument and its predecessor the Wechsler-Bellevue, Form I. The purpose of this paper is to report such relationships in the records of forty six college students who were administered both tests. As would be anticipated, the subjects were of superior intelligence and represented a limited range of IQ scores. The scores ranged from 105 to 143. It must be recognized that this restriction of IQ range is of importance in evaluating the results which follow. Forty six college students were administered both the WAIS and the Wechsler Bellevue. High correlations were found on the verbal scales, but a very low correlation on the performance scale. The limited range of IQ scores involved may influence results.

The article reports on the szondi test. In a previous paper, the researchers have shown the wide variation in the frequency with which pictures are chosen by Szondi test subjects. In the present study,the researcher test the homogeneity of the Szondi pictures from the standpoint of recognition by comparing sets 1 and V to see whether there is a significant difference in the frequency with which pictures are recognized. Should the pictures be associated with categories by chance, the researcher expect to find on the average one correct identification for each sample of eight pictures, or a total of 300 for the two sets in the experiment. The chi-square test is used to measure the significance of the difference between the number of correct identifications in the two sets.