Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments
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Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments

Hedwig Teglasi

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Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments

Hedwig Teglasi

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About This Book

Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret a variety of storytelling techniques

Storytelling techniques are a popular projective approach for assessing many aspects of a person's personality, such as cognitive processes, emotional functioning, and self-regulation. The broad spectrum of techniques includes the Thematic Apperception Test (TATā€”the most widely embraced), Roberts-2, and TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story). To use these tests properly, professionals need an authoritative source of advice and guidance on how to administer, score, and interpret them. Written by Hedwig Teglasi, a leading researcher of the TAT and other storytelling techniques, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition is that source.

Like all the volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health professionals, and those in training, quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of major psychological assessment instruments. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered.

Fully revised and updated to reflect the current research supporting storytelling techniques, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition reflects the latest data and theory on scoring stories and includes new material on interpreting stories in reference to a person's abilities in cognition, emotion, relationships, motivation, and self-regulation. As well, the author provides expert assessment of the methods' relative strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on their clinical applications, and several case studies to illustrate best practices for implementing the storytelling approach to personality assessment.

Other titles in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series:

  • Essentials of Assessment Report Writing

  • Essentials of PAI Assessment

  • Essentials of 16PF Assessment

  • Essentials of Neuropsychological Assessment, Second Edition

  • Essentials of MillonTM Inventories Assessment, Third Edition

  • Essentials of Rorschach Assessment

  • Essentials of MMPI-2 Assessment

  • Essentials of MMPI-A Assessment

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Publisher
Wiley
Year
2010
ISBN
9780470627181
Four
ESSENTIALS OF TAT ASSESSMENT OF COGNITION
Storytelling tasks such as the TAT that present standard instructions and moderately ambiguous scenes are personality performance measures that reveal aspects of thinking and problem solving in similarly unstructured social situations. Therefore, their use in the assessment of cognitive processes is not meant to replace or validate the more structured tests of cognitive ability or achievement. Problems in reasoning evident in narratives, though related to adjustment, are not necessarily corroborated by Full Scale IQ scores or various sub-scores. Standard IQ tests were intended to assess the ability to solve well-defined (academic) problems but not the capacity to solve ill-defined problems (Pretz, Naples, & Sternberg, 2003). Reasoning under ill-defined conditions involves dispositions such as sensitivity to recognize the moments that call for reasoning and the inclination to invest the necessary energy (Perkins & Ritchhart, 2004). Individuals may be more or less inclined to scrutinize the available cues, to seek new information, and to think about or act on the information that is available. A dispositional view of thinking focuses on how the person typically reasons in real-life conditions and when the person reasons, not on whether the person is able to reason under maximal performance conditions such as when provided with a clear problem or prompted to respond (Ritchhart, 2002). Rapid Reference 4.1 contrasts maximal and typical performance conditions.
The constructs measured with storytelling are not meant to confirm but to supplement information provided by more structured tasks. To generalize a construct from a measure to real-life functioning, it is necessary to consider the performance conditions of both. For instance, two forms of sustained attention (see Barkley, 1997), contingency-shaped attention and goal-directed persistence, apply respectively to maximal and typical circumstances.
This chapter describes procedures for evaluating schema-guided qualities of thinking and information processing with picture-elicited storytelling tasks. Schemas guide the narrative process including the interpretation of the pictured scene, the weaving together of sequences of events with thoughts, intentions, and emotions, and arrival at a reasonable resolution for the problem set before the characters. Styles of information processing are evident in how narrators interpret the stimuli to formulate the central problem or tension, plan and monitor the logic and coherence of the unfolding story, connect ends with the means to accomplish them, incorporate cause-effect understandings and time perspective, and relate the inner (thoughts, feelings, intentions, goals) and outer circumstances (actions, events, stimuli) within and across story characters.
Rapid Reference 4.1
Maximal and Typical Conditions of Performance (see Cronbach, 1970; Sackett, Zedeck, & Fogli, 1988)
Maximal Conditions:
ā€¢ Perceived importance of the task promotes heightened level of effort and attention;
ā€¢ Clear expectations and performance standards guide responses; and
ā€¢ Observations are restricted to short time span, allowing for an uncharacteristic spurt of effort that cannot be sustained.
Typical Conditions:
ā€¢ Lack of awareness of being observed or evaluated reduces likelihood of individualsā€™ exerting their best effort;
ā€¢ Responses are monitored over a long period of time;
ā€¢ Responses require competencies learned over time through concerted effort, enabling performance of complex tasks that refl ect a history of more typical exertions; and
ā€¢ Evaluation criteria and performance guidelines are not specifi ed, leaving individuals to impose characteristic ways of responding.

PERCEPTUAL AND CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF THE STIMULI

A basic function of the schema is to impose meaning on what is perceived in the TAT pictures. Hence, an essential question pertains to how the narrator formulates the central dilemma conveyed by the scene: Does the narrator draw meaningful, abstract conceptualizations from perceptual inputs or remain focused on those inputs? Object permanence and the various conservations are common examples of conceptual structures that coordinate multiple aspects of what is perceived (Flavell, 1963; Piaget, 1954). Piaget reasons that centration, a focus on a narrow aspect of an object in perceptual processes, leads the perceiver to distort the object by formulating partial impressions, apart from the context. Centration is not a purely developmental phenomenon because it can occur at any age due to cognitive or attentional limitations as well as emotional duress. A smoothly operating conceptual framework applied to the TAT task would guide attention to the most relevant stimulus elements and enable the narrator to grasp the ā€œgistā€ of the stimulus configuration.

ABSRACT AND CONCRETE THINKING

Concrete thinking is constrained by the immediate context or specific personal experiences, whereas abstract thinking involves relative freedom from the immediate context in favor of abstracted ā€œlessonsā€ derived from experiences (Geary, 2005; Johnston & Holzman, 1979). Behaviorally, abstractness is manifested by using an inner framework to initiate and sustain independent action rather than being compelled by the situation.
Being tied to the immediate circumstance, concrete thinking does not integrate the present perspective with past experience and future considerations. If a behavior has relevance only for the present, there is little incentive to tolerate frustration, and external sources of motivation are needed. Moreover, when experience has little to do with what preceded it and with what is expected to follow, the individual is unprepared to apply lessons from the past to the present and to the anticipated future. Without an abstract inner framework to interpret situations and guide behaviors, the individual is likely to engage in trial-and-error problem solving rather than use cause-effect analysis to plan actions or anticipate outcomes or reactions of others. Furthermore, the individual is unlikely to look inward to reflect on intentions, goals, motives, or actions.
CAUTION
An individual who tends to be anxious or is threatened momentarily by the stimulus or the task or who is perhaps averse to risk may be reluctant to depart from the concrete cues in the TAT picture despite being able to do so in less ambiguous or emotionally charged situations. Thus, emotions generated by the task may restrict fl exibility and promote concrete strategies for responding.
CAUTION
Concrete thinking (bound by the stimulus, instructions, or specifi c personal experience) is common to individuals with very low IQ scores but occurs independently of IQ scores at higher levels.
CAUTION
Phrases that suggest insight (e.g., ā€œwill work harderā€ or ā€œtalk about the problemā€) may refl ect ā€œwordsā€ that the narrator has heard or read but has not integrated in ways that are useful. Examiners should note the fit between specifi c content and overall framework of the story (coherence, logic, appropriate linkages among intentions or wishes, actions, and outcomes).
Manifestations of abstract-concrete cognitions in TAT stories are evident in how the narrator interprets the pictured stimuli, as well as in the content and structure of the story. Concrete thinking includes interpretations that are not detached from the specific cues shown in the cards (e.g., ā€œthere is a gun so he must have killed someoneā€) and story characters whose thoughts, feelings, and actions are provoked by immediate events or wishes without accompanying psychological processes. Abstract cognitions afford flexibility, enabling the narrator to construct stories that transcend the perceptual features of the stimulus and, hence, to coordinate the progression of external events not only with charactersā€™ overt actions but also with their psychological processes (including thoughts, feelings, and intentions). The greater the flexibility in thinking, the more freedom to draw from experiences by combining constituent parts of different ā€œstoriesā€ housed in memory. Such flexibility reduces reliance on the superimposition of an intact story based on a single episode or one that is borrowed (stereotypes, scripts, movie plot) in favor of active construction of stories that provide a nuanced interpretation of the pictured scene.
Difficulty with abstracting and symbolizing affective experiences does not necessarily suggest a similar problem in the impersonal domain. Children with autism exhibit a deficiency in understanding the social world even when their comprehension of the physical world remains intact (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1986). To study young childrenā€™s understanding of causal relations, Baron-Cohen and her colleagues used a previously developed picture-sequencing task followed by a request to narrate a story. They presented three types of story sequences: (a) mechanical, depicting physical-causal relations; (b) behavioral, depicting sequences of overt behavior without requiring reference to mental states; and (c) intentional, requiring an intuitive and immediate understanding of a mental state (false belief) to explain the sequence of behaviors. The first two types of sequences were relatively well understood by children with autism and high ability levels, but the intentional stories were poorly understood relative to the comparison groups. Compared to children without cognitive impairments and children with Downā€™s Syndrome, those with autism rarely used mental state expressions (e.g., desire, knowledge, emotion, or action implying an inner state). Given the pattern of findings, the authors concluded that the problem was not the inability of the children with autism to make an inference about ā€œbehind the scenesā€ causes but a specific deficit in conceiving of mental states.
DONā€™T FORGET
The coherence of the narrative is a refl ection of the organization of the schemas guiding their construction. Breakdowns can occur at the following junctures:
ā€¢ Attention: The narrator may fi nd it diffi cult to focus attention due to problems engaging or sustaining attention, shifting fl exibly, or disengaging.
ā€¢ Conceptualization: The narrator may experience diffi culty with making inferences to ā€œexplainā€ the central confl ict or dilemma implicit in the pictured scene, as well as with generating a plan for constructing the story.
ā€¢ Strategic application of knowledge: If the narrator has learned rote response patterns (i.e., without discerning general principles, patterns, rules, or implications), he or she may be unable to generalize the knowledge to a new situation.

Abstraction-Concreteness in Stimulus Interpretation

The most abstract explanation assigns meaning to the ā€œgestalt,ā€ accounting for, but transcending the particular details of the stimulus. The most concrete responses focus on the minor or irrelevant details or show reasoning directly from isolated features of the stimulus. Concrete appraisals of the stimulus suggest that the narratorā€™s ideas are heavily reliant on the immediate cues from the environment or details of a given experience rather than on symbolic representations of lessons consolidated from multiple prior experiences. For example, describing the boy in Card 13B as ā€œhe has no shoes,ā€ ā€œheā€™s poor,ā€ or ā€œheā€™s an orphanā€ entails increasing distance from the perceptual features of the stimulus and reliance on increasingly abstract schemas. Likewise, feelings of characters may be described as emanating directly from the stimulus (e.g., ā€œhe looks unhappyā€), external events (e.g., ā€œthe string brokeā€), or psychological processes (e.g., ā€œheā€™s upset because he canā€™t play the violin nicelyā€). When responses are closely bound to the stimulus or instructions of the storytelling task, the narrator is looking to explicit clues from the environment for structure and may perform better in a rehearsed or routine situation and well-learned task. With respect to interpretation of the stimulus, concrete and abstract thinking concerns the relative focus on the perceptual cues versus the overall meaning of the scene.

Abstraction-Concreteness in Narrative Structure

Abstract thinking is evident in the organization of the story content. Certain structural dimensions of the narrative reflect thinking beyond the here-and-now, including: (a) transitional eventsā€”reasonable causes to explain a change in feeling or realistic sequences of events in relation to outcomes (versus magical or arbitrary turnabout); (b) context for eventsā€”reasonable history to explain tensions pictured in the stimulus; and (c) coordination of inner life with external circumstancesā€”linking external events with charactersā€™ ideas or feelings (e.g., weaving together actions, intentions, thoughts, feelings, and outcomes).

Coding Level of Abstraction-Concreteness in Narrative Content

A narrative indicates concrete thinking if the charactersā€™ concerns center on the here-and-now (daily routines), content borrows heavily from fictional plots or stereotypes in an attempt to match a ā€œready-madeā€ template to the current task, or ideas are limited to associations to the stimulus features without a coherent theme. Abstraction in TAT stories is classified below into four levels, starting with the most concrete: Piecemeal description of the stimulus; Literal description of the stimulus; Stimulus bound interpretation; Abstract interpretation.
Descriptive responses (levels one and two) adhere closely to the stimulus, whereas interpretive responses (levels three and four) provide explanations beyond the features of the pictured scene (Byrd & Witherspoon, 1954). Expectations about degree of abstraction in children vary from a predominance of interpretive (ā€œapperceptiveā€) responses by kindergarten (Lehman, 1959) or by age 7 (Schwartz & Eagle, 1986) or 8 (Byrd & Witherspoon, 1954). Others report that descriptive stories are common in third grade (Gardner & Holmes, 1990).

LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION

Level One: Piecemeal description of the stimulus. Content is limited to enumerating isolated or irrelevant details or elements of the picture without relating various components to each other or to a common theme. Feelings are tied literally to the stimulus.
ā€¢ Naming or describing parts of the pictures, rather than interpretation (holding head and therefore sad; a boy looking at a violin; a woman opening the door).
ā€¢ Instructions are taken literally (each component of the directions is addressed rat...

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