No abstract

The Rorschach technique, despite its widespread clinical apphcation, has remained isolated from the mam body of theoretical and expenmental psychology The reasons for this isolation have been dearly analyzed by Thurstone (6) Among experimental psychologists it has been a commonplace to express the desirability of having the chniaan supply expenmental evidence to establish the saentific respectability of his techniques The experimentalists themselves have shown no eagerness to take over this task which they are more aj^ropnately equipped to tmdertake Moreover, little emphasis has been placed upon the desirability of enriching the field of general psychology by incorporating mto it the lngemous techmques, the remarkabfe insights, and the challenging assumptions of the clinical psychologists This paper presents one of a senes of studies directed toward the expenmental investigation of the processes involved in subjects' reactions to the Rorschach TestThe expenmenter who invades the area of the Rorschach tester has many awkward problems to face He must master the speaallzed lang^uage of sconng and interpretation sufficiently well to enable him to identify the psychological phenomena, and yet he must resist the temptation to become so addicted to this language and way of thinking that he loses all other perspective He must appreciate the special nature of the phenomena, akin to fantasy, produced under the free conditions of the Rorschach testmg procedure and must recognize the difficulties and dangers of attemj^ing to subject them to the conditions of rigid experimental controlThe expenment to be reported deals with the influence of stimulus-color on the reactions to ink blots, the effects of the so-called "color determinant " As originally defined by Hermann Rorschach (5, pp 22-35), color determination meant the actual determination * The wnter is indebted to Mrs. Florence Kuhns iot a large share in the woiic of conducting this expenment

V-iONSTRUCTivE theorizing and research on the projective process have been greatly hampered by the general tendency to accept and preserve as "given" the particular set of conditions which happened to be specified originally for each of the various projective tests We now have a wide variety of "standard" projective conditions varying all of the way from the unstructured blots and free directions of the Rorschach test to the highly structured stimulus words and rigid directions of the word-association test Hence instead of a general projective psychology', we have a number of systems for interpreting projective phenomena, each applicable only withm Its own local test setting Toward a more constructive approach, we have suggested an experimental attack upon the whole problem with a deliberate program for varying drastically the inviolate conditions of some prominent projective techniques The present stud> is a continuation of our previous research directed toward determining the extent to which the projective process is influenced by variation of a particular aspect of the test situation, namely, the task attitude of the subject While the previous research (4) dealt with the effects of the free conditions of the Rorschach test, the present study concerns the influences of the restricted task imposed by the usual conditions of the word-association test Experimental variation of the task attitude was selected as a promising line of attack since it could provide an approach to the ' This research was aided by a grant from the Sigma Xi-RESA Research Fund The wnters are grateful to Harold E Israel for helpful suggestions related to the theoretical aspects of this paper

Since Haber and Haber had recently established the fact that eidetic imagery (EI) is not a common phenomenon among normal American children, this study was based upon the premise that it may be an abnormal phenomenon, more likely to be found among retarded children. It was reasoned that the prolonged retention of a primitive form of cognition (typified by EI) should be a more likely component of a generally retarded rate of conceptual and language development. This prediction was tested by administering Haber's test for EI to a small group of 34 retarded children. The percentage of eidetikers found in this retarded sample was more than three times greater than that in Haber's normal sample. The total retarded group was selected so as to include an approximately equal number of brain-injured and familial Ss. The most striking finding of this study was the fact that almost all (89% to 100%) of the eidetikers belonged to the brain-injured group. The duration of their images was very long (up to 10 min.) and correlated more highly with primary measures of EI than did accuracy of the reported detail. If these dramatic preliminary results are confirmed with a larger sample, they have interesting implications for a neurological theory of imagery, for future research and for the diagnosis of brain-injured children.

AN THEIR original impact upon American psychology projective techiuques aroused a wave of confused skepticism, but along with this they produced a crisis in psychological theory Here was the startling proposal that by an unbelievably simple procedure it was now possible to reveal the djmamics of the deepest regions of the personality, to get at phenomena which had eluded the complex expenmental and psychometric methods of probing Could it be possible that such a simple technique might succeed where other methods had failed^ If so, how could its almost magical accomplishment be explained''Originally, explanation was sought in an obvious common feature of the projective techniques, namely, the unstructured nature of the matenals and test sittiation. An important change has occurred, however, in the meamng of the term projecttve teckmque to render this line of explanation obsolete Today projective tests may include anything from completely unstructured free-association to highly structured tests such as the Bender-Gestalt and the WechslerBellevue. Apparently we no longer have a distinct class of proj«:tive tests, we have instead a projective approach which can be api^ied to any test situation Although the present trend implies the existence of a projective process which can be evoked by a large variety of conditions, we know virtually nothing about the psychological character of this process. We do not even know whether the same kind of projective process occurs under both unstructured and structured test conditions Thus the projective magic has been extended, but it remains unexplained This fundamental change in the conception of projective techniques has not been thoroughly assimilated and has not yet penetiated • The writers are greatly iiidd>ted to Professor Hardd R Israel £or generois and helpful suggestxms related to the thrarehcal aspects of this paper.