Discriminant analysis of clinical outpatients and public school children by TEMAS: a thematic apperception test for Hispanics and blacks

This study investigated the utility of the minority version of the Tell Me a Story (TEMAS) test, a thematic apperception technique for minorities and nonminorities, by discriminating public school and clinical Hispanic and Black children. The test is composed of 23 stimuli, depicting minority characters interacting in urban settings, and is scored for nine personality functions (e.g., aggression and anxiety). The subjects were 100 outpatients at psychiatric centers and 373 public school students, all from low socioeconomic (SES), inner city families. All subjects were tested individually by examiners of the same ethnicity. Results indicated that TEMAS profiles significantly, p less than .001, discriminated the two groups and explained 21% of the variance independent of ethnicity, age, and SES. Classification accuracy, based on the discriminant function, was 89%. The TEMAS profiles interacted with ethnicity; better discrimination was evident for Hispanics than Blacks. Results are discussed in terms of the need to develop and validate culturally sensitive personality tests for ethnic minorities.     

Measuring needs with the thematic apperception test: a psychometric study

Three apperception theories that explain how people respond to Thematic Apperception Test cards are proposed: a simple apperception theory, an apperception theory with a dynamic component, and an apperception theory with 2 types of responses. Each theory is translated into an item response theory model and is applied to need for achievement (nAch) data. The analysis indicates that the best fitting model is provided by the apperception theory with 2 types of responses, also referred to as the drop-out apperception theory. The 1st type of response predicted by this theory is determined by the nAch level of the person and the achievement-response-eliciting value of the card; this response is diagnostic for the nAch level of the person. The 2nd type of response is not determined by the 2 aforementioned characteristics and is therefore not diagnostic of the person's nAch level. The results are cross-validated for need for power and need for affiliation.     

The thematic apperception test: toward a standard measure of the big three motives

The application of the Thematic Apperception Test to the assessment of motives has been heralded as an important milestone in personality psychology. However, although this approach is well established, there is at present no standard battery of cues for measuring the Big Three motives (achievement, affiliation, power). Furthermore, the extent to which scoring subcategories contribute to overall motive scores has been neglected. Our research with students and managers examined the effectiveness of picture cues in eliciting motive imagery and the prevalence of scoring subcategories within each motive scoring system. Results from 2 data sets comprising 547 men and women suggested that there were 3 cues that should be retained for future research and that motive scoring systems could be refined through removal of redundant subcategories. Further research is needed to systematically investigate the effectiveness of a standard battery of cues and the validity of revised motive scoring systems.     

Administration of the thematic apperception test: Contributions of psychoanalytic psychotherapy

Psychodiagnosis has given more to than it has received from psychotherapy. Some psychological tests may benefit from the wisdom accrued and embodied in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the well known projective instrument, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), guided by the intent to make the use of the test more consistent with the psychoanalytic situation and contemporary projective theory, it is suggested that the basic TAT instruction be modified and that greater attention be paid to an explicit theoretical rationale by which the cards are selected and presented. Inviting the patient to collaborate in a self-interpretation of the TAT can serve as an assessment of the patient's capacity for introspection and the development of the working alliance. It is further suggested that psychoanalytic developmental theory can function as an epigenetic organizer of the patient's TAT protocol.This research was supported by the Veterans Administration. The author is grateful for the inspirational and thoughtful comments of Drs. Marvin Acklin, Murray Tieger, and Edwin Wagner.     

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.     

Generalization of learning from picture books to novel test conditions by 18- and 24-month-old children

Researchers know little about whether very young children can recognize objects originally introduced to them in a picture book when they encounter similar looking objects in various real-world contexts. The present studies used an imitation procedure to explore young children's ability to generalize a novel action sequence from a picture book to novel test conditions. The authors found that 18-month-olds imitated the action sequence from a book only when the conditions at testing matched those at encoding; altering the test stimuli or context disrupted imitation (Experiment 1A). In contrast, the 24-month-olds imitated the action sequence with changes to both the test context and stimuli (Experiment 1B). Moreover, although the 24-month-olds exhibited deferred imitation with no changes to the test conditions, they did not defer imitation with changes to the context and stimuli (Experiment 2). Two factors may account for the pattern of results: age-related changes in children's ability to utilize novel retrieval cues as well as their emerging ability to understand the representational nature of pictures.     

Assessment of attention deficit disorder using a thematic apperception technique

Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (AD-HD) is regarded as being relatively common among school-age children, but the literature reveals a number of confounding factors with standard assessment techniques of the disorder. Using a structured thematic apperception technique (the Tell-Me-A-Story [TEMAS] test) to measure attention to pictorial stimuli depicting characters, events, settings, and covert psychological conflicts, a study was conducted with 152 normal and 95 clinical Hispanic, Black, and White school-age children. Results reveal that the AD-HD children are significantly more likely than normal children to omit information in the stimuli about characters, events, settings, and psychological conflicts. Differences between the groups are large and persistent in the presence of structured inquiries by the test examiners. Results suggest the potential utility of structured thematic apperception techniques for the assessment of AD-HD, eventually to facilitate DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) diagnosis, but also to invite closer scrutiny in carefully controlled validity studies.