Search

To investigate the prevalence of thought disorder and the possible appropriateness of the Bizarre–Idiosyncratic Thinking Scale for children and adolescents with severe psychiatric disorders, 96 child and adolescent inpatients and day hospital patients, ages 6 to 18 years, at a state psychiatric hospital were rated by review of retrospective records using Marengo and Harrow's 1986 Evaluation of Bizarre–Idiosyncratic Thinking Scale for the presence of thought disorder in the Thematic Apperception Test and Rorschach Inkblot Test responses. Although the Evaluation of Bizarre–Idiosyncratic Thinking Scale had not been previously used with children and adolescents, the analysis suggested possible indications of thought disorder in several diagnostic groups. No significant differences were found on the Rorschach between patients with Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Not Otherwise Specified and those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Major Depression, and Conduct Disorder. On the basis of the Thinking Scale ratings, the Thematic Apperception Test responses showed significantly higher ratings of thought disorder for patients with Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Not Otherwise Specified. There was no general relation between thought disorder and age or IQ, but schizophrenic patients, aged 13 and older, had more thought disorder than schizophrenic patients who were younger than 13.

Rigidity vs flexibility has often been mentioned in discussions of creativity and problem solving. The present study investigated the relation of a non-verbal test of rigidity (Breskin Rigidity Test) to tests of semantic redefinition, associational fluency, inductive reasoning, and drawing completion. The performance of flexible Ss was significantly better than the performance of rigid Ss on all tests but the associational fluency test.

This study investigated the degree to which 43 college Ss could decode “sentograms,” a form of graphic expression of emotions discussed by Clynes. Ss could decode sentograms at better than chance levels. However, accuracy in matching sentograms to labels of specific emotions was considerably worse than in matching sentograms to broader categories of affects.

Summary.-Warehime and Jones found moderate correlations between social desirability and short-term mood level scores on the Wessman-Ricks Personal Feeling Scales. They suggested that it might be valuable to study parterns of dissimulation in self-reports of immediate feeling states. In the present authors' studies involving long-term mood reports and multivariate methods, social desirability was shown to have a moderately weak relationship with measures of mood lwel and mood variability. Under conditions of confidentiality and good rapport, repeated self-reports of mood appeared to share more variance with important personality characteristics and situational influences than with social desirability per se. warehime and Jones (1972) reported several moderately positive but significant correlations among the Edwards (1957) Social Desirability Scale, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964), and mood level scores on the Wessman and Ricks (1966) Personal Feeling Scales. Relevant findings have been obtained in our own studies where the MMPI L and K scales, the Crowne-Marlowe scale, and various measures of defensiveness showed slight to moderate correlations with avowals of high positive mood levels on some Personal Feeling subscales (Wessman & Ricks, 1966; Gorman & Wessman, 1974). Warehime and Jones concluded their note with the statement that "Results provide suggestive leads for investigation of patterns of dissimulation in self-report of immediate feeling states." Through our research with the Personal Feeling Scale, we have been able to examine some of the relationships of social desirability and dissimulation to subscale scores and feel that we can provide a partial answer to the very complex issue raised by Warehime and Jones (1972). In this note, we attempt to show that the mood scales of the Personal Feeling Scale seem to be good measures of affect and when well administered, appear to be only slightly influenced by social desirability and dissimulation. In our studies, Ss either responded anonymously (Gorman & Wessrnan, 1974) or had established considerable rapport with the investigators over a 3-yr. period (Wessman & Ricks, 1966). In these situations, in which the press toward dissimulation was presumably low, social desirability scores showed some slight correlations with some mood level scores and no correlations with others. Those few significant correlations (none higher than .28) indicated that Ss scoring high on social desirability reported higher levels of harmony on the harmony-anger measures. Clearly, happiness, energy, self-confidence, and other moods measured by the Personal Feeling Scale are desirable qualities, but

Previous research has shown field-dependence (as measured by the Embedded Figures Test) to be related to rigidity (as measured by the Einstellung Test). However, these studies confound variables of intelligence and mathematical ability in that these factors place a ceiling on Ss' performance. Using a non-verbal test of rigidity which requires no intellective skill to obtain either a high or low rigidity score, the present data show 20 field-dependent females to be rigid, but not the 27 males.