Rorschach form level as an indicator of potential in mentally retarded children

Abstract

PROBLEM Klopfer (2) presents a scoring system for the "form level'' of Rorschach respoiises, and suggests that this provides a measurement of intellectual potential. He further suggests that the Rorschach form level may indicate in some cases more accurately the true potential than do the standard intelligence tests, where extraneous factors may depress performance on the latter. This study was suggested by the fact that Rorschach responses given by retarded children do, in fact, generally appear to fall in the lower levels of Klopfer's scoring system, but that occasionally a child testing at a low I& level will give a response which seems inappropriately well organized and detailed for that level. This seems to point to the possibility of using this instrument to pick up cases where the true potential is being obscured by other factors. In order to do this, however, it seemed desirable to validate the scoring system at low mental levels. PROCEDUREOur subjects were people who had been committed to the State Home and Training School a t Wheat Ridge, Colorado, as being "mentally retarded", and who had been administered the Rorschach test during their residence there. The data used were those already in the records, from tests which had been administered over a period of some years. Cases were taken in alphabetical order from the files until the desired number of 100 was reached. This covered almost all cases on which a Rorschach had been done.This represents, of course, a biased sample, since the Rorschach has generally been given in cases where the child was referred to the Psychology Department because of behavioral or emotional problems, or where on admission the case history wa8 such as to suggest the possibility of such problems. Whatever relationship might be found would, however, be expected to be depressed rather than exaggerated by this selective factor, if it is true that the Rorschach would tend to reveal potential which the intelligence tests do not, since such cases would show discrepancies between the two scores. Since it is these discrepancies which are of primary interest, the emotionally disturbed sample, while lowering correlations, seems suitable for purpose of the study.Since Klopfer also suggests that the best response given in terms of form level may represent the most accurate evaluation of potential, the Rorschach protocols were scored on the basis of the highest form level found in any one response contained in each protocol. All scoring was done by the senior author, and the effort was made, in most cases successfully, to avoid any knowledge on her part of the I& level of the subject until after the scoring was done. This was not possible in a few cases; however, in general, most of the Rorschach protocols may be said to have been scored "blind".After the scoring of the Rorschach responses, the IQ's were taken from a list which had been compiled of all students. This list represents the best present estimate of the child's current level of functioning, based in general on a variety of inte...