Developmental changes across age groups : cognitive complexity and imaginal aspects on the Rorschach test

The purpose of this study was to examine developmental changes across age groups in Rorschach performance using the Burstein-Loucks scoring system. This study focused upon the areas of Cognitive Complexity and Imaginal Aspects.

Potential subjects were screened for behavioral, emotional, and academic problems so as to obtain a psychologically healthy sample. The subjects were 80 children, divided into three groups, 6, 8, and 11 years old, attending public schools in Knox County.

It was predicted that the proportion of Simple responses and Diffuse responses would decrease with increasing age and the proportion of Articulated responses. Integrated responses, and Arbitrary responses would increase. It was also predicted that the proportion of Animal Movement responses and Texture responses would decrease with increasing age and the proportion of Human Movement responses. Human Emotion, Human Motivation, and Vista responses would increase. The proportion of Object Movement responses was predicted to remain stable across age groups.

Separate Kruskal-Wallis One-Way ANOVAs were performed for each of these 11 predictions. The results supported five of these predictions. The proportion of Simple responses decreased with age. The proportion of Articulated responses. Human Movement responses, and Vista responses increased with increasing age. The proportion of Object Movement responses remained stable across ages. Similar results were obtained using a One-Way ANOVA, with the exception that Diffuse responses were found to decrease significantly with age. Both a parametric and a nonparametric analysis of variance were performed for age and frequency of response for each of the 11 variables.