Essay about picture perfect

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Psychological Assessment

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Picture Picture
What’s wrong with this Picture? Projective assessment
This reaction assignment asks you to consider the efficacy of projective testing in deciding if someone has a major mental illness. Read the article attached to this assignment. Answer the questions below.
Make certain that when you give your view on this important topic you support it with information from the text.
1. Describe how the Rorschach and TAT were developed.
The Rorschach ink blot test and the TAT are thought of, and designed to detect mental illness/mental health problems. The original version of the Rorschach ink blot test was created in the 1920s by a Swiss psychiatrist, although the one frequently used today has people explain and relay what is shown to them in ten ink blots. In the 1950s, researchers began to realize a problem: psychologists routinely contemplated same responses as different. A “Comprehensive System” was developed in the 1970s in response to the lack of standardization that the Rorschach ink blot test had, with precise directions for how the test should be carried out and executed.
The TAT has cards with vague/unclear actions depicted, presented to people, asking them to come up with a story based on what they have seen. Out of 31 cards, individuals are shown only a few of those, usually between five to twelve. It was first created by a psychiatrist Henry Murray and his student
Christiana Morgan in the 1930s.

2. Explain how the tests are administered.
Rorschach - Participants are shown ten ink blots and are supposed to relay what they see on them. Half of the ink blots are color and half of them are gray. Psychologists frequently administer the test to those who have violent, aggressive or criminal histories or those suspected to be victims of sexual abuse. TAT - Participants are shown between 5-12 out of a selection of 31 cards that have ambiguous scenes on them. Based on these cards, they are supposed to come up with a narrative - who the characters are, what is going on, how they feel, what the story means, etc. The cards may contain people or animals in ambiguous situations. The way and amount of the cards presented to individuals taking the test is not standardized, it is done by every clinician differently.

3. How are they scored?
Rorschach - A psychologist ‘rates’ the amassed reactions for the many variables in the ink blots. The evaluator notes how the participant looked at the blots and their responses to come up with a psychological profile of the participant - looking at a certain ink blot in a particular way could be indicative of a certain disease or mental problem. Overall, there is not a consistently strong level of agreement regarding the meanings of the variables and their responses with raters.
TAT - There are many different standardized scoring systems for the TAT. Often times, instead of looking at these, evaluators simply use their own judgement and intuition to score and assess people’s responses to the cards they are shown, to assess if people have psychological problems. Some of the standardized TAT scoring systems have been shown have a weak test-retest reliability.

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Psychological Assessment

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4. What research support exists for their use?
Little research supports the Rorschach ink blot test and TAT’s methods and utilization. While the
Rorschach ink blot test has been shown to correctly identify psychiatric afflictions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, it has not been shown to similarly, regularly note depression and anxiety disorders. For the TAT, one positive effect that a few standardized scoring systems have verified that it can correctly discern some personality attributes, such as the need to achieve.

5. What did the California blood bank study find?
That the Rorschach ink blot test norms that are designed to separate mental health from mental illness