Developmental and sex differences : cognitive complexity on the rorschach

The Purpose of this study was to examine developmental and sex differences in children's Rorschach performance using the Burstein-Loucks scoring system. This study focused upon the area of Cognitive Complexity. The sample consisted of school children ages 5 through 12. Potential subjects were screened for behavioral, emotional and academic problems so as to obtain a psychologically healthy sample. Rorschach protocols were collected from 96 subjects, and these data were combined with previously collected Rorschach data to obtain a total of 226 subjects with approximately 30 subjects for each age year. It was predicted that the proportion of Simple and Diffuse responses would decrease with age and the proportion of Integrated, Articulated and Arbitrary responses would increase. It was also predicted that the proportion of Integrated, Articulated and Arbitrary responses would be greater for males and the proportion of Simple and Diffuse responses would be greater for females. Separate Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA's were performed for each of the five developmental predictions and a multiple comparisons post-hoc procedure was performed to pinpoint specific age differences. The results supported two of the developmental predictions. The proportion of Simple responses decreased with age, and the proportion of Articulated responses increased with age. The same results were obtained using a two-way parametric ANOVA. Five separate Mann-Whitney tests were performed for each of the predicted sex differences. No significant sex differences were found. Similar results were obtained using a parametric two-way ANOVA with the exception that Articulated responses were greater proportionately for males than for females. These results suggest that there are developmental changes in children's Rorschach performance although not as pronounced or consistent as predicted.