Emerging Research with the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (1.5 CEs)

These five, diverse, international studies demonstrate the growth of the research base to R-PAS.

1. Complexity as a Moderator of the Relationship of Rorschach Measures with Psychosis and Severity of Disturbance: Research has demonstrated that the R-PAS Perception and Thinking problems variables are valid measures of psychotic phenomena and level of severity of disturbance. In a related way, part of the reason for including Complexity variable was based on the expectation that it would moderate this relationship. Using multiple comparisons and multiple datasets, this study investigates whether this might be true.

2. A Multimethod Assessment of the Links Between Narcissism, Psychological Mindedness, and the Observability of Personality Traits: Sholander and colleagues use the Rorschach Grandiosity and Narcissism Variables (GNVs) and the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI) to predict potential manifestations of narcissistic behavior, including over-reporting success on a maximal performance task, and overreporting psychological mindedness relative to informant-reports. They also examined whether more interpersonal GNV criteria versus imagery-based criteria would correlate more with an Informant FFNI and whether a self-reported Entitlement-Arrogance composite would predict poor performance on a measure of personal intelligence. Finally, they determined if self-and informant-reports of narcissism and psychological mindedness would correlate more highly for more observable characteristics than less observable characteristics and whether composite score of performance-assessed psychological mindedness would moderate the convergence self-ratings and informant-ratings. The authors found
partial support for these relationships.

3. An R-PAS Study on Bariatric Surgery Candidates: Forty obese women seeking bariatric surgery were compared to 29 non obese controls regarding psychological functioning using Rorschach, DERS, PHQ9, SRQ, BAI and Trail Making Test. Bariatric patients showed lower levels of complexity scores on the Rorschach compared to non-obese women, and lower levels of emotion dysregulation. The results highlights the important of multi-methods assessment bariatric patients as they might be less aware of emotional functioning and biased when assessed through self-report.

4. Can R-PAS Improve the Association between Rorschach and TAT Methods of Object Relations: The Rorschach is a projective or performance-based test that is used to assess object relations and thought disorder. The TAT (Murray, 1943) is another performance-based measure that has shown great utility in assessing object relations when using Westen’s SCORS-G (1995) scoring system for assessing object relations; however, expected correlations between the two tests were lacking. The current study looked at the R-PAS R-Optimized administration system and concordance with the SCORS-G for the TAT. The R-Optimized Method of Rorschach administration was hypothesized to establish correlations between the two measures not found in previous studies. Findings did not indicate improvements with R-PAS.

5. Factors Associated with Variability in R-PAS Form Quality Interrater Reliability: Previous studies have shown that interrater reliability for coding Rorschach Form Quality (FQ) is good but sometimes variable. FQ codes are established by finding objects in the FQ table, examiner extrapolation from the tables, or examiner “judgment of fit” when the FQ tables are not helpful. However, no studies have examined interrater reliability as a function these alternative paths and available research suggests that it is not reliable. To address these issues, independent raters scored more than 800 archived Rorschach responses. Initial results suggest that raters agreed about 75% of the time on FQ but that examiner judgment is unreliable.

Chair

Donald J. Viglione | Alliant Internations University

Goals & Objectives

1. Describe emerging research designs and findings with the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS).
2. Apply correlates and moderators to increase R-PAS validity.