Eleonora Cannoni

Correlations for the Rorschach with the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

The present study examined the correlations between some variables of the Rorschach test and scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking which were administered to 40 normal volunteers. The Rorschach protocols were scored using Exner System. All the variables of the Figural Form of the Torrance tests showed clear association with the Developmental Quality, Synthesised Responses of the Rorschach, except for the Figural Elaboration scores. The group of Verbal variables of the Torrance tests correlated with the scores on Space and Unusual Form Quality Responses of the Rorschach. The results are discussed in terms of the cognitive operations involved in creative aspects of thinking.

Emotion understanding, pictorial representations of friendship and reciprocity in school-aged children

This study examined the relationship between emotional understanding, friendship representation and reciprocity in school-aged children. Two hundred and fifty-one Caucasian 6-year-old children (111 males and 140 females) took part in the study. The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR) were used. Children having a reciprocal friendship and children having a unilateral friendship with a child named as their “best friend” were compared on the emotional understanding task and on their pictorial representations of friendship. Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not influenced by classroom-level differences. Results showed that children with reciprocal friendships drew themselves as more similar to and more cohesive with their best friends, and they showed better understanding of emotions, than children having a unilateral friendship. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.

Rorschach Measures during Depth Hypnosis and Suggestion of a Previous Life

Using a procedure with suggestions to prompt false memories from an alleged previous Life, we hypnotized 16 normal subjects and collected Rorschach data before and during the hypnotic induction. During hypnosis 9 subjects produced memories that they claimed to remember from a former life. The Rorschach findings bore no resemblance to the available data for other dissociative disorders. Rorschach variables during hypnotic trance remained almost unchanged from baseline. These results indicate that the Rorschach poorly reflects hypnotic trance.

Disturbance of imagination and symbolization in pervasive developmental disorders: preliminary study utilizing the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

Two clinical cases of children of 6 and 7 years are presented with their respective Rorschach records. The first case had a diagnosis of autism, the second of Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. The modes of elaboration and responses to the ambiguous stimuli of the Rorschach test were compared with the clinical symptoms of the two subjects, which are centered on the two opposite poles of absence of imagination in the first case and distortion of the imaginative processes in the second.

The Bicycle Drawing Test What Does It Measure in Developmentally Typical Children

To verify the dimensionality of Bicycle Drawing Test (BDT), we applied the coding system of Greenberg, Rodriguez, and Sesta to bicycle drawings made by 295 boys and 320 girls (6-10 years old) with typical development, and submitted the data to item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. These analyses confirmed only two of the original four dimensions of the BDT: spatial reasoning and visual-motor control. The scores in these two factors were correlated with the Colored Progressive Matrices, the Rey Complex Figure (Copy and Memory) and with the teachers’ ratings in mathematics, language, and drawing. The correlations, albeit moderate in magnitude, were consistent with the hypothesized convergent and discriminant validity. After checking for measurement invariance across gender and age, we conducted two analyses of variance, the first of which showed a significant difference between younger children (6-8 years old) and older children (9-10 years old); the analysis of variance by gender did not yield significant differences. These data enhance the usefulness of the BDT as a measure of separate cognitive components, but do not support its use as a measure of mechanical reasoning.

Friendship and Romantic Relationships During Early and Middle Childhood

Ideas about romantic relationships have been studied in adolescents. This article extends this study to younger children. We asked two hundred seventy 5- to 11-year-olds to draw “two children who have a romance” and “two children who are friends,” and we subsequently interviewed each participant about the characters’ relationships. The drawings were coded with three scales of Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR), an instrument by Bombi, Pinto, and Cannoni. Interviews were categorized by the characters’ age and identity and by the distinguishing features of romance and friendship: location, intimacy, activity, personal characteristics, and emotions. Scale scores were compared with variance analyses, whereas the categories frequencies were submitted to chi-square. Results showed that all participants were able to distinguish the two relationships, even if the descriptions increased in detail with age. Girls provided more information than boys about romance, but were less inclined to talk about their own romantic experiences.