Statistical power and the Rorschach: 1975-1991

The Rorschach Inkblot Test has been the source of long-standing controversies as to its nature and its psychometric properties. Consistent with behavioral science research in general, the concept of statistical power has been entirely ignored by Rorschach researchers. The concept of power is introduced and discussed, and a power survey of the Rorschach literature published between 1975 and 1991 in the Journal of Personality Assessment, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Journal of Personality, Psychological Bulletin, American Journal of Psychiatry, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology was undertaken. Power was calculated for 2,300 statistical tests in 158 journal articles. Power to detect small, medium, and large effect sizes was .13, .56, and .85, respectively. Similar to the findings in other power surveys conducted on behavioral science research, we concluded that Rorschach research is underpowered to detect the differences under investigation. This undoubtedly contributes to the inconsistency of research findings which has been a source of controversy and criticism over the decades. It appears that research conducted according to the Comprehensive System for the Rorschach is more powerful. Recommendations are offered for improving power and strengthening the design sensitivity of Rorschach research, including increasing sample sizes, use of parametric statistics, reduction of error variance, more accurate reporting of findings, and editorial policies reflecting concern about the magnitude of relationships beyond an exclusive focus on levels of statistical significance.     

University students' felt alienation and their attitudes toward African-Americans, women and homosexuals.

177 respondents attending a midwestern state university reported greater alienation from the wider society when they held more positive attitudes than negative ones toward women and homosexuals. Alienation and attitudes toward African-Americans, women, and homosexuals were not influenced by gender or religiosity.     

Validity of the Threat Index.

The validity of the Threat Index was examined in a study of 42 students and 15 HIV+ clients. When completing the Threat Index, subjects rate the self and death on 30 bipolar adjectives. A count is made of the number of times the same adjective poles are used to describe the self and death. Uses of the same poles are called matches, while uses of different poles are called splits. The Threat Index is based on the assumption that splits indicate threat. Analysis showed that neither splits nor matches were usually threatening and that neither was necessary or sufficient for the experience of threat. These results did not support the validity of the Threat Index.     

Correlations of Beck Depression Inventory and Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale.

The scores of 15 adolescents who had a primary diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, 21 of Conduct Disorder, and 23 control subjects on the Beck and Reynolds depression scales were correlated .58 over-all, .73 for the Posttraumatic group, .48 for the Conduct Disordered group, but .37 for controls. The Reynolds scale did not identify depression in these adolescents as effectively as did the Beck scale.     

Validity and clinical scale comparisons between the MMPI and MMPI-2 with psychiatric inpatients.

This study was designed to investigate the comparability of the original MMPI (1950) and the MMPI-2 (1989) with a psychiatric patient population. 34 male and 3 female patients, shortly after admission to one of two acute psychiatry units, completed the old and revised versions of the MMPI. Paired t tests indicated but scant differences for raw scores, while many more differences were found among T scores for validity, clinical, and supplemental scales. Analyses, however, showed all scales on the two forms to be highly correlated. Analysis of the high-point and two-point codes across the two administrations also showed relative stability, although the proportion of Scales 2 (Depression) and 8 (Schizophrenia) decreased, while those for Scales 6 (Paranoia) and 7 (Psychasthenia) increased markedly in the MMPI-2 protocols. Examination of each version's discriminability among mood- and thought-disordered subsamples suggested that the MMPI provides slightly better delineation between diagnostic classes. Discriminant function analyses showed that there were essentially no differences between the two forms in the accurate classification of clinical and nonclinical groups. The findings reported here provide support for the MMPI-2; despite modification, the newer form retains the advantages of the original MMPI. Differences found here may be unique to psychiatric patients and their patterns of MMPI/MMPI-2 equivalence and may not generalize to other special populations.     

Picture naming.

Picture naming has become an important experimental paradigm in cognitive psychology. To name a picture can be considered an elementary process in the use of language. Thus, its chronometric analysis elucidates cognitive structures and processes that underlie speaking. Essentially, these analyses compare picture naming with reading, picture categorizing, and word categorizing. Furthermore, techniques of double stimulation such as the paradigms of priming and of Stroop-like interference are used. In this article, recent results obtained with these methods are reviewed and discussed with regard to five hypotheses about the cognitive structures that are involved in picture naming. Beside the older hypotheses of internal coding systems with only verbal or only pictorial format, the hypotheses of an internal dual code with a pictorial and a verbal component, of a common abstract code with logogen and pictogen subsystems, and the so-called lexical hypothesis are discussed. The latter postulates two main components: an abstract semantic memory which, nevertheless, also subserves picture processing, and a lexicon that carries out the huge amount of word processing without semantic interpretation that is necessary in hearing, reading, speaking and writing.     

Accessing words in speech production: stages, processes and representations.

This paper introduces a special issue of Cognition on lexical access in speech production. Over the last quarter century, the psycholinguistic study of speaking, and in particular of accessing words in speech, received a major new impetus from the analysis of speech errors, dysfluencies and hesitations, from aphasiology, and from new paradigms in reaction time research. The emerging theoretical picture partitions the accessing process into two subprocesses, the selection of an appropriate lexical item (a "lemma") from the mental lexicon, and the phonological encoding of that item, that is, the computation of a phonetic program for the item in the context of utterance. These two theoretical domains are successively introduced by outlining some core issues that have been or still have to be addressed. The final section discusses the controversial question whether phonological encoding can affect lexical selection. This partitioning is also followed in this special issue as a whole. There are, first, four papers on lexical selection, then three papers on phonological encoding, and finally one on the interaction between selection and phonological encoding.