Response frequency problems in the rorschach: clinical and research implications with suggestions for the future

This article focuses on clinical and research problems associated with response frequency (R) being a variable in the Rorschach. Despite the fact that variations in R directly contribute to 50% of the explainable variance among Rorschach raw scores, there is a dearth of empirical evidence to document what R actually measures. Furthermore, in the practical use of the Rorschach's structural data, R is considered to be a nuisance variable that is controlled and not deemed interpretively significant. Given this information, two research agendas are proposed. The first is to more thoroughly determine whether R measures anything of substantial clinical importance. The second is to evaluate systematically the relative merits of making R a constant rather than a variable through use of an R-controlled method of Rorschach administration. This strategy would resolve many of the psychometric problems related to R. Introducing greater structure and clearer expectations to the task may also sharpen the Rorschach's ability to assess and predict important aspects of personality. However, significant disadvantages would also result from this change in administration. Both sides of the issue are discussed in some detail.     

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Blocking or partial activation?

Tip-of-the-tongue states may represent the momentary unavailability of an otherwise accessible word or the weak activation of an otherwise inaccessible word. In three experiments designed to address these alternative views, subjects attempted to retrieve rare target words from their definitions. The definitions were followed by cues that were related to the targets in sound, by cues that were related in meaning, and by cues that were not related to the targets. Experiment 1 found that compared with unrelated cues, related cue words that were presented immediately after target definitions helped rather than hindered lexical retrieval, and that sound cues were more effective retrieval aids than meaning cues. Experiment 2 replicated these results when cues were presented after an initial target-retrieval attempt. These findings reverse a previous one (Jones, 1989) that was reproduced in Experiment 3 and shown to stem from a small group of unusually difficult target definitions.     

Undesirable life-events and depression in young adolescents

We compared the relationship between individual undesirable life-events and comprehensive life-event factors, as well as major depression in adolescents. Students in four public suburban middle schools were screened for depressive symptomatology and life-events by a self-administered questionnaire. Seven of 21 individual events (parents' divorce, parental job loss, problems between parents, problems between the adolescent and his/her parents, failing a grade in school, school suspension, death of a close friend) and three of six life-event factors (conflict/disappointment, marital discord, maladjustment) were significantly related to depression in univariate models. A multivariate examination of the individual events was difficult to interpret, but examination of the event factors found maladjustment and conflict/disappointment significant. Analyses using the undesirable life-event factors provided a clearer picture of the relationships investigated by grouping related events into a more manageable number of independent categories. Specific combinations of life-events suggest stronger associations with adolescent depression than others. Clinicians may identify youths at risk for depression when specific combinations of undesirable life-events occur.     

Adolescent suicidal behavior and popular self-report instruments of depression, social desirability, and anxiety

Popular self-report inventories of depression, hopelessness, social desirability, and anxiety, along with the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire, were completed by 150 college students. Tanaka-Matsumi and Kameoka (1986) had questioned the use of popular depression instruments in the assessment of this population, due to the high correlation between depression, anxiety, and social desirability scales. The present experiment also found significant correlations between the self-report instruments and suicidal behaviors. These findings may be due to the fact that anxiety and depression are often found together in clinical settings, and that the content of depression and anxiety scales is not specific to those constructs.     

Does motor programming necessitate response execution?

The complexity of a movement is known to affect the time it takes to initiate the movement. This effect is thought to reflect changes in the duration of processes that operate on a motor program. This question addressed here is whether programming a movement compels the start of its overt execution. If it does, then the programming processes may be said to occur after the "point of no return." We report results from an empirical procedure and a theoretical analysis designed to study processes before and after this point separately. According to our results, changes in the complexity of a movement affect only the prior set of processes. From this we argue that motor programming does not necessitate response execution and that the point of no return occurs very late in the information-processing system.     

Perceptual-motor processing of phonetic features in speech

Some reaction time experiments are reported on the relation between the perception and production of phonetic features in speech. Subjects had to produce spoken consonant-vowel syllables rapidly in response to other consonant-vowel stimulus syllables. The stimulus syllables were presented auditorily in one condition and visually in another. Reaction time was measured as a function of the phonetic features shared by the consonants of the stimulus and response syllables. Responses to auditory stimulus syllables were faster when the response syllables started with consonants that had the same voicing feature as those of the stimulus syllables. A shared place-of-articulation feature did not affect the speed of responses to auditory stimulus syllables, even though the place feature was highly salient. For visual stimulus syllables, performance was independent of whether the consonants of the response syllables had the same voicing, same place of articulation, or no shared features. This pattern of results occurred in cases where the syllables contained stop consonants and where they contained fricatives. It held for natural auditory stimuli as well as artificially synthesized ones. The overall data reveal a close relation between the perception and production of voicing features in speech. It does not appear that such a relation exists between perceiving and producing places of articulation. The experiments are relevant to the motor theory of speech perception and to other models of perceptual-motor interactions.     

Some observations on the rescue of fallen women

Citing the example of the creator of Professor Higgins of Pygmalion , as well as other celebrated figures, this paper delineates a number of biographical features common to some would-be rescuers of degraded women. Aside from demonstrating the relevance of these portraits to Freud's observations on the oedipal aspects of the subject, the author emphasizes the attempted verification of phallic attributes in the women as an additional motive in their redemption .