Loren V. Corotto

Age, Sex, Race, and the Lüscher Color Test

Scores on Lüscher Color Test are claimed to be independent of age, sex, and race. The test was administered to 102 consecutive admissions (71 males, 31 females; 35 Negroes, 67 Caucasians) to an acute psychiatric inpatient unit. The preference for each of the 8 Lüscher colors was correlated with age, sex, and race. Two of the 48 biserial correlations were significant (p = .05). Negroes demonstrated significantly greater preference for grey than did Caucasians. Females showed significantly greater preference for red than males. These results are essentially supportive of the Lüscher premise, i.e., age, sex, and race are independent of color preference.

The development of a WAIS short form for clinical populations

Assessed the validity of a brief form of the WAIS in the evaluation of several clinical populations. The short form was composed of three subtests: Similarities, Picture Arrangement, and Block Design. The sample consisted of 27 schizophrenics, paranoid type; 30 schizophrenics, schizoid-affective type, 29 schizophrenics, chronic undifferentiated type; and 28 organics (brain syndrome patients). Correlations were computed between the weighted IQ scores of each population and the Full Scale IQ. Correlations of .94 for chronic undifferentiated schizophrenics and .81 for organics were particularly noteworthy. Moreover, this triad of subtests underestimated the IQ score for organics by 7.11 points, which suggests that the constant used with this population should be corrected appropriately.

Early Recollections of Schizophrenics

Early recollections of schizophrenics were investigated for differences among diagnostic categories which may be used for differential diagnosis. On four “clusters” the content of such recollections on “themes” was significantly different. Furthermore, paranoid schizophrenics mentioned “new situations” in the “theme” of their recollections more frequently than other schizophrenic subtypes.

The Role of Visual Perception in the Reproduction of Bender-Gestalt Designs

Summary Four groups (controls, organics, acute and chronic schizophrenics) of 14 Ss each were matched for age, sex and intelligence. The principal tasks involved (1) reproducing the designs and (2) matching according to similarity a series of 8 design-choices with varying degrees of distortion from most-like to least-like the stimulus designs. The results confirmed the hypotheses (1) that perception of the B-G designs does not significantly differentiate between normal subjects and subjects manifesting psychopathology while (2) there exists a significant difference regarding reproduction of the designs between the groups. These findings are considered to be in agreement with current conceptualization of perception.

First memories of “normal” and of schizophrenic, paranoid‐type individuals

Compared the early recollections of 40 schizophrenic, paranoid-type patients and 37 normal individuals. The themes of the early recollections of the two groups were significantly different. The normal group reported events such as illness, injury, and attention-getting more frequently than the schizophrenic group, whereas the early recollections of the schizophrenic group contained more variety of the themes than those of the normal group.

The use of a modified administrative procedure (MAP) for the bender‐gestalt test with schizophrenic patients and normals

Advocated a modified procedure for administering the Bender Gestalt Test that involves administering the BG in a conventional way and, after a brief intervening period, a second administration with specific instructions to copy the BG designs exactly. Three subtypes of schizophrenia and a normal control group were studied: 25 paranoids, 25 chronic undifferentiated, 25 schizoaffectives, and 25 controls. Each schizophrenic subgroup demonstrated significant improvement in performance on the BG when the modified administrative procedure was employed. Some implications of the findings are discussed.