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A Study On The Tat

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The TAT includes 30 cards, of which an assessor chooses a subset for a particular subject. The cards feature various ambiguous scenes, most involving interpersonal situations. The subject is asked to tell a story regarding the card, and the story may include an explanation of what is happening in the scene, what events preceded the scene, what events may follow the scene and what the people in the scene are thinking or feeling. The assessor uses the themes emerging from the stories produced by the subject to infer personality characteristics about the subject.
The TAT is a projective test in that, like the Rorschach test, its assessment of the subject is based on what he or she projects onto the ambiguous images. Therefore, to complete …show more content…

The CAT 's creators suggest a series of ten variables to consider when interpreting the results. These variables include the story 's major theme, the major character 's needs, drives, anxieties, conflicts, fears, and the child 's conception of the external world.

Multiplicity of scoring systems One precaution required in general assessment of the TAT is the absence of a normative scoring system for responses. The original scoring system devised in 1943 by Henry Murray, one of the authors of the TAT, attempted to account for every variable that it measures. Murray 's scoring system is time-consuming and unwieldy, and as a result has been little used by later interpreters. Other scoring systems have since been introduced that focus on one or two specific variables—for example, hostility or depression. While these systems are more practical for clinical use, they lack comprehensiveness. No single system presently used for scoring the TAT has achieved widespread acceptance. The basic drawback of any scoring system in evaluating responses to the TAT story cards is that information that is not relevant to that particular system is simply lost. Computer scoring A recent subject of controversy in TAT interpretation concerns the use of computers to evaluate responses. While computers were used initially only to score tests with simple yes/no answers, they were soon applied to interpretation of projective measures. A computerized system for interpreting the Rorschach

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