Verbal aptitudes of disturbed children from thematic protocols.

Abstract

Studies (1, 2, 4) indicate that the increase in the complexity of the formal aspects of stories children tell is dependent on age. This study explored whether children's stories may be suitable vehicles for measuring verbal aptitude especially for disturbed children who often respond poorly to structured verbal tests. Twelve normal and 16 disturbed children (referred for diagnosis) between the ages of 9-5 and 12-9 were given the Binet, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and the Auditory Apperception Test (AAT) in three separate sessions with half of each group taking the TAT before the AAT. The system employed for scoring the srories is a rnodification of Tomkins' quantitative approach to thematic data (3). The following factors in the TAT stories are given equal weight: number of words, ratio of qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs) to number of words, number of emotional states, number of situations resolved, and number of characters. The Binet IQs of the normal group correlate (rho) .923 with the age-adjusted TAT standard scores (5 factors combined). Although the disturbed group did relatively poorly on the Binec (mean IQ 20 points lower than the normals) and their TAT scores correlated only ,103 with Binet IQs, they equalled the performance of the normal group on the TAT. The words, qualifier ratios, and conditions each separately correlated significantly with IQ for the normal (.874, 351 and .637), but only the qualifier ratio did for the disturbed (.791). Only for the disturbed were there significant relationships of words, as well as conditions, with resolutions (.722 and .726) and of words, conditions, and resolutions each respectively with characters (.765, ,730 and .500). Also, increased responsiveness to the AAT was evident for the disturbed children. Mean number of additional words for those who were responsive to the AAT were 711 compared to 172 for the normal; on the TAT mean additional words for the disturbed who were more responsive to the TAT were 186 (cf. 154 for the normal). This evidence suggests measurement of structural components in thematic data may provide an estimate of verbal aptitude in disturbed children when the Binet does not. Study of the structural components of thematic data, especially with consideration of the verbal factorial loadlog, not determined here, seems needed.