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ABSTRACT
PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF ABUSE
AND NEGLECT IN CHILDREN
By

Aileen Anne Thatcher

Child abuse is a centuries old phenomenon passed on
from generation to generation. While numerous studies have
focused on the abusing parent, research is lacking regard-
ing the psychological characteristics of the child victim.
Observers have reported that battering and neglect are
associated with children's physical, developmental, and
mental retardation, deviant speech patterns, apathy to stim-
ulation as well as irritability and withdrawal when approach-
ed. Furthermore, since many battered children are also neg-
lected, many researchers have concluded that battering and
neglect are different expressions of the same phenomenon.
This experiment compared 11 battered, 10 neglected, and 13
control group children on measures of orality, castration
anxiety, pathogenesis, projective aggression, and overt ag-
gression. The subjects were white latency age children aged
6 through 10. Five of the children in each group were female
and the rest male. The abused children were obtained from

several Chicago area agencies, the controls from three Paro-

g

Aileen Anne Thatcher

chial institutions. While there were cases of pure neglect,
no cases were found in which a child who had been battered

had not also been neglected. However, the neglect in abused

cases was usually not so severe as in the pure neglect cases.

The children were tested with several cards from the
Blacky Pictures test and the Thematic Apperception Test, as
well as with a modification of Drabman and Thomas' overt
measure of tolerance of aggression. Prior to participation
children selected a toy they would receive after testing as
payment for c00perating. The toys were rated for aggres-
siveness. After the testing it was arranged so that the
child thought another child had received his or her most
desired toy. Each child then had the choice of accepting
another toy or of waiting till the following week when the
Experimenter promised to bring the child's first choice
toy. Agreeing to wait thus measured trust or ability to
delay gratification.

In the overt measures of aggression (toleration of ag-
gression) the child was enlisted to help the Experimenter
babysit. On the way into the testing room the children
were shown a playroom with a camera for watching children.
After giving the projective tests the Experimenter received
a prearranged call supposedly asking her to use the video-

tape monitor to watch some children in the playroom. She

 

Aileen Anne Thatcher

turned on the monitor, started the videorecorder, and then
was again called to the phone. She asked if the child
would watch the screen and listen via an earphone and notify
her if the children misbehaved. On the videotape two child-
ren started off playing nicely and then began to interact

in an increasingly aggressive way until first the camera

was knocked over causing the screen to go blank, then the
microphone was apparently knocked out of commission. The
elapsed time before the child reported to the Experimenter
that the children were misbehaving measured tolerance of
aggression and also indicated the child's willingness to
help others.

There were 3 significant effects along the abuse dimen-
sion. (1) The neglected group took longer than either the
abused or the control groups to notify the Experimenter of
the increasing aggression in the videotape test (p‘< .01).
(2) Castration Anxiety was significantly higher for the neg-
lected males than for either the abused or the control males
(p <:.05). (3) Among females the control group was more
willing to postpone gratification than any of the other

groups (p <:.025). In addition, there were two significant

sex effects: Females were higher than males on the Oral Ero-

ticism Scale of the Blacky (p<:.01); males picked more ag-

gressive toys than females (p <:.01). Neither the TAT Ag-

es 1'

 

Aileen Anne Thatcher

gression Scale nor Karon's Pathogenesis Index Distinguished
one group from another. However, neither has been used on
children before. Children from all groups tended to give
far more responses considered pathogenic in adults. This
finding probably reflects the children's stage of cogni—
tive-emotional developments.

Findings regarding unanticipated differences between
abused children were discussed in terms of the battered
group's possible habituation effects to aggression and
greater responsiveness to compliance demands. Suggestions

for future studies were noted.

PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF ABUSE
AND NECLECT IN CHILDREN
By

Aileen Anne Thatcher

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Psychology

1976

l o . ' - '
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. '11:. u H

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, the author would like to acknow-
ledge her personal and professional indebtedness to Dr.
Jeanne E. Gullahorn, who has always been helpful and under-
standing no matter what the problem nor how busy she was.

The author would also like to express her deepest
gratitude to the other members of her committee. She is
especially indebted to Dr. Bertram Karon, who devoted many
day and evening hours to helping her both to design, change,
and analyze this research and to guiding her to a better
understanding of what psychology and a good psychologist
are. In addition, Dr. Lawrence Messe has provided inval-
uable help with the design and analysis. Finally, the
author wishes to thank Dr. Albert I. Rabin, whose guidance,
knowledge, and constructive criticisms have often given
her insights she would otherwise not have had.

There are other persons and agencies, who have con-
tributed much to this dissertation and to the author's per-
sonal growth, whom she would like to thank. In particular

she is grateful to Mr. G. Lewis Penner, Ms Julia Saulius,

ii

 

iii

and the staff of the Juvenile Protective Association of
Chicago; to Ms Marian Spasser and her staff at the Bowen
Center; to Ms Karin Flodin, Mr. Roger Fox, and the other
members of the Metropolitan Area Protective Services; to
the case-workers of the Chicago Area East District Office
Outpost of the Illinois Department of Children and Family
Services; to Father Smythe of Maryville Academy; to Sister
Joan and Sister Veronica of Saint Mary of the Lake School;
to Sister Stephanie of Saint Ita's School, and to the
children who participated and their parents. In addition,
the author is grateful to her undergraduate confederates:
Mr. Paul Blossom; Ms Diane DiGloriamo; Mr. Ian Levinson,
and Ms Rachel Purchno.

Finally, the most important person in my graduate
career has been my husband, Roy. He has acted as friend,

advisor, and co-worker throughout our married life.

_4

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4

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES .............................

CHAPTER

I.

II.

III.

IV.

INTRODUCTION ...........................

History of Child Abuse ................
Symptoms of Battered & Neglected Children
Characteristics of Abusive Parents .....
The Development of Aggressive Tendencies
in the Abused Child ............... ...
The Present Investigation .............
Summary of Hypotheses .................

METHOD ...... . .........................

Subjects ..............................
Materials ............ . ................
Procedures ............................

RESULTS ...............................

Orality ...............................
Anxiety Regarding Physical Harm ........
TAT Pathogenesis ......................
TAT Aggression Scores ..................
Aggressive Toy Choice .................
Tolerance of Aggression ...............
Willingness to Delay Reward ...........
Additional Findings ....................
Summary of Results ....................

DISCUSSION ............................

Orality ...............................
Fear of Harm ..........................
Pathogenesis and TAT Aggression .......
Toy Choice as a Measure of Aggression
Videotape Measure of Tolerance of Aggres-
SIon ................................

iv

Page

vii

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Unpredicted Sex Effects ...............

Suggestions for Future Research

APPENDICES
REFERENCES

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84
87

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LIST OF TABLES

Analysis of Variance of Orality
Measures ........ ..... . ..... . .....

: Analysis of Variance of Fear of Harm

Measures .........................
Analysis of Variance of Pathogenesis

Scores ...........................

Scores ..... . ......................
Chi-Square Analyses for Toy Choice

Chi-Square Analyses for Toy Choice
Combining Toy Choice Categories 1 G 2

Analysis of Latency of Response to
Videotaped Aggression .............

Analysis of Decisions Regarding Post-
ponement of Gratification ... ......

vi

Page

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61
63

64

65

68

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Figure 1:

Figure 2:

LIST OF FIGURES

Frequency of TAT Aggression Scores

Frequency Distribution of Latency
of Response to Videotaped Aggression

viii

Page

66

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

This investigation focused on children who have been
abused or neglected and compared them to a Control group.
To provide some background or the context in which the
present research is embedded, we first review information
regarding the history of child abuse, the symptoms of
abused and neglected children, and epidemiological data.
Inasmuch as the constellation of abuse and neglect is
passed from one generation to the next, information is
presented regarding the characteristics and family patterns
of abusing and neglecting.parents. Several hypotheses of
this study emerge from these latter considerations. Addi-
tional hypotheses are based on past observations regarding
aggressivity of abused and neglected children. The hy-

potheses are then summarized along with a brief resume

of their rationale.

HISTORY OF CHILD ABUSE

The mistreatment of children is not new. The further

back in history one goes the lower the level of child care

I...

It

one finds, and the more likely children were to have been
killed, abandoned, whipped, sexually abused, or terrorized L‘sl'
by their caregivers. However, each generation of parents,
in reaction to their own abuse as children, tried to over-
come their prediliction to beat their children. Thus,
there tended to be a continuous lessening of the abuse and F1; LfTT
more mature levels of child-rearing emerged. k
In general, there were six major evolutionary trends

in child-rearing (DeMause, 1975). In antiquity there was

. .
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the Infanticidal Trend. In Medieval times there was the

i
f

Abandonment. Trend, when being a good parent was not seen
as an asset nor was being a bad parent seen as a detriment.
Children were neither respected nor seen as worthy of
parental sacrifices. Because parents projected their own
feelings of badness and inadequacy onto their children, i.‘
they allowed the children to live but neglected them. The

infant was of no consequence until he or she could walk; -Ai:
then the child would be prematurely forced into the posi-

tion both physically and sexually of functioning as an

adult in an adult society (Hunt, 1970). Children did not

have any reality as children. There was no education for .AW"
children as it is known today. Children were often beaten

prior to the age of one. They were salted and then bathed

in ice water to ”harden” them. They were swaddled. They

were tossed around like balls for the adults' amusement.
More than half of all infants perished. Infanticide of
both legitimate and illegitimate children was common,
especially among poorer families (Aries, 1962; DeMause,
1975).

Hunt (1970) felt that it was doubtful that children
were ever really neglected during the Middle Ages. True
neglect, he stated, would have resulted in all children
dying. He stated that in the age of Abandonment. children
were only neglected during infancy and that after infancy
a strict regimen of discipline was introduced to make the

children into premature adults. This severe discipline

was made necessary by the adults' perturbation at the child-

ren's orality, obstinacy, and sexuality. Also, the child-
ren's Oedipul attachments threatened the family which was
usually based only on family mergers rather than personal
feelings. That is, the children were seen as trying to
replace the parent of the same sex in a tenuous marriage.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with
religious reform and a new stress on parents as the spirit-
ual guardians of their children's bodies and souls, came
the Intrusive Mode. The family became less a unit for the

transmission of a name and an estate and became more a unit

 

for the transmission of morales. Children were still seen
as being bad but there was less parental projection. This
resulted in children being less threatening to their parents
and in their better care. Childhood was extended in length
beyond infancy into adolescence. Rules began to be written
about how children should be raised and disciplined, and
colleges were formed to teach them right from wrong. Birch-
ing was reserved for actions bordering "on crime" such as
blasphemy, theft, falsehood, insulting the servants, or
being contemptuously disobedient (Aries, 1962). While child-
ren began to be seen as children and to be taken seriously,
they were also seen as being susceptible to the devil. To
ward off their innate evilness, they were terrorized with
hell, were kept under constant surveillance, were rigorous-
ly raised to instill self-control, and were shielded from
adult life.

The desire to provide for children caused families
to draw more closely together and finally resulted in the
formation of the nuclear family. With the emergence of the
nuclear family in the nineteenth century came the Socializ-
ing Mode in child-rearing. It emerged first in France in
the middle classes; it was not seen until much later in the
Americas or in England or in the lower or upper classes

(Aries, 1962; DeMause, 1975; Hunt, 1970). While Children

were not seen as much as the pawns of the devil, they were
still seen as needing strong parental guidance. Covert
manipulation and the instilling of guilt along with a de-
tached parenting became the rule.

At present the Helping Mode is emerging. In the Help-
ing Mode the child is seen as knowing what it needs and the
parents are seen as the child's helpers in fulfilling the
child's needs and potentials (DeMause, 1975).

Throughout history there have been three major re-
actions to children: the projective, when the child is seen
as displaying the caregiver's feelings and actions; the
substitutive, when the child is seen as a substitute for
an important adult in the caregiver's own life; and the
empathic, when the child's own needs are seen as important.
The empathic reaction has only recently become of any im-
port, while the substitutive and projective have always been
important. Thus, while children have gradually, through the
centuries, come to be seen as more worthy of consideration,
at each age, there have existed parents who functioned at
earlier child rearing levels. During the nineteenth century
among the poorer classes young children were put to work
under deplorable conditions to help support the family.

And, even today, it is not uncommon to hear of babies left

to die in garbage cans or otherwise deserted. However, most

brutality may well come from the belief that children are
their parents' property and, as such, can be disposed of
at the parents' whim. Physical punishment is often used
as a means of showing who is "boss". Punishment often
leads to abuse (Fontana, 1973).

Battered and neglected children probably have always
existed, but it was not until the late nineteenth century
that any organized reaction occurred in this country. In
1874 the Society forthe Prevention of Cruelty of Animals
brought action for a child who had been beaten and starved,
on the grounds that as a member of the animal kingdom she
deserved the same rights as other animals. One year later
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was
founded in New York. Despite changes in attitudes about
children and increasing advocacy for their rights, abuse

is still widespread.

SYMPTOMS OF BATTERED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN

The Battered Child Syndrome

 

Physical Symptoms. In 1957 Caffey remarked on the

 

physical conditions of battered children and noted the re-

current combination of subdural hematoma and long bone path-

ology. Other investigators have included other conditions
for use in the diagnosis of child battering. Elmer (1967),
and Kempe, Silverman, Steele, Droeguemueller and Silver
(1962) defined the "battered child syndrome" as a clinical
condition of children who have received physical abuse and
who usually exhibit evidence of old and healing injuries,
especially long bone fractures, subdural hematoma, failure
to thrive, soft tissue swelling or skin bruising, and a
history inadequate to account for the injuries seen. Bat-
tered children also frequently display gastric or intes-
tinal perforations, intestinal obstruction, liver spleen
and kidney lacerations, metaphysial lesions and hematomas
in the small bowel, eye injuries, and brain damage (Fried-
man, 1972; Helfer, 1968; Kempe,et'a1.,1962). Unlike child
accident victims, battered children are less likely to
have received lacerations or to have ingested a toxic sub-
stance.

Guandolo (1968) found that over 90% of his sample of
battered children had injuries ranging from mild concussions
to brain lacerations, 50% had multiple injuries and old
trauma, 10% had burns usually to the lower extremities and
buttocks. At least 25% of his sample of battered children
had been previously admitted to a hospital for neglect and

battering.

In a post-facto study, Martin (1972) gave 42 batter-
ed children language, developmental, neurological and in-
telligence tests, and clinical evaluations. Though none
of the children in this study had been premature, 7% had
been difficult in some way since birth. Two other children
were probably retarded prior to the assualt and one had had
medical problems. After the assault 50% of the children
had brain damage and 33% were retarded. They were apathe—
tic, weak, fearful, and 33% also demonstrated failure to
thrive as indicated by height and weight. Almost all of
the children, including those with normal IQ's, displayed
severe impairments in speech and language.

Gladston (1965), in his study of physically injured
children mostly under 4 years, found that they had little
interest in eating, playing with toys, or interacting with
others. They seemed to have "shell-shock" with a blunting
of all external manifestations of inner life. They were
motionless, expressionless, and refused to recognize the
outside world. Instead of turning toward their parents
for reassurance when brought into the hospital, the child-
ren would move away from them and seemed to expect no com-
fort from them. They were withdrawn, irritable, and oc-
casionally aggressive. While they cried little, when they

cried their crying had a "hopeless" quality and they would

watch with interest and fear if another child cried. The
battered children also seemed to be continuously asking

for something from people such as food, services, and favors
possibly as a means of reassuring themselves that they were
safe. These reactions were stable, and any changes were
usually superficial.

Neither the battered nor the neglected children were
usually brought to the hOSpital for their actual problems.
The battered children were usually brought in for failure
to thrive, malnutrition, poor skin hygiene, irritability,
or repressed personality.

Neglect and Failure to Thrive. Inadequate treatment

 

and neglect often result in a child's failure to thrive --
a developmental and growth failure that usually occurs only
in very disturbed families. Barbero and Shaheen (1967)
identified four types, not entirely distinct, of "failure
to thrive": those with systemic symptoms, those resulting
from or concurrent with another disease or abnormality,
those without systemic symptoms, adn those with concurrent
signs of inflicted harm.

Failure to thriVe children display marked physical,
emotional and intellectual retardation (Elmer, 1960; Glaser,
1968). They improved in the hospital and deteriorated again

when they were returned home. The criteria for diagnosing

10

failure to thrive include: weight below the third percen-
tile and developmental stimulation and feeding; intellec-
tual retardation with increases in IQ score after a fortui-
tous change in environment (Bulland, Glaser, Heagarty, and
Pivchik, 1967). Additional clinical indications of neglect
include poor body hygiene, lack of responsiveness to stim-
ulation, and ”vigilance" or "radar gaze," by which the child
tries to ferret out the dangerous aspects of his environ-
ment, irritability when approached, withdrawal, and psycho-
social disruption in the family.

Leonard, Rhymes and Solnit (1966) in their study of
failure to thrive children from 2 to 27 months found that
only four out of fourteen cases could definitely be attri-
buted to underfeeding. Of the fourteen cases none had been
premature and all had been below the third percentile for
weight since they were two months old. All the children
who were under four months of age were developmentally re-
tarded, displayed the "radar gaze," rarely smiled, vocal-
ized, or acted cuddly.

In Patton and Lytt's (1962) study of failure to
thrive children under three years age all of the children
came from disordered homes, and their problems seemed to
be more the result of social neglect than of lack of food.
Real physical abuse was rare in their sample. In Bullard's

et a1. (1967) study, however, 10% of the failure to thrive

11

children had healing fractures and contusions. Most thrived
in the hospital. During follow-up, after discharge to their
parents, over half of Bullard's sample showed regression

to their former level.

Subsequent Development. In a follow-up study of

 

children, most of whom had been battered when they were
under ten months of age, Elmer (1967) found that 26% of them
were either dead or in institutions. In this sample the
incidence of prematurity was uncommonly high. If premature
children tend to be more seriously injured as a result of
battering, it may be because their bones break more easily
and because they are more irritable than full-term babies,

eat less, and must be fed more often.

Epidemiological Studies

 

Accurate statistics on abuse are unobtainable since
only a portion of abused children are taken to physicians
or hospitals and many who are seen go undiagnosed and unre-
ported. Many physicians are unwilling to report abuse.

In a poll of 71 hospitals Kempe and Silver (1959)
found that only 302 cases of battering had been recorded.
Thirty-three of these children died and 85 had permanent

brain damage. Only in one-third of the reported cases was

12

legal action taken. With increased public attention and

new legislation the rate of reporting has increased. In

one hospital alone 4 infants were treated for abuse in only
one day; two of them died immediately and another died four
weeks later of other unexplained injuries (Kempe, etal.,
1962). A child once battered is likely to be battered again.

Despite the problems involved, Gil (1968, 1970) con-
ducted a nationwide study of child abuse to determine the
incidence rates and distribution patterns. He found that
5,993 cases were reported in 1967. Half of the cases re-
ported involved neglect, one-fourth involved sexual abuse,
and the remaining fourth involved battering. The distrub-
tion of child abuse corresponded roughly to the geographic
distribution of the population. It was about equally di-
vided between boys and girls.

Most studies have shown that abuse is likliest in
the younger age groups, with most abused children being
under three years of age (Fontana, 1973; Helfer, 1968; Kempe,
etal., 1962). This skewing toward infancy may be because
infants are more vulnerable to serious harm and are more
likely to be brought to hospitals than are older children.
Gil found that there was much more abuse of older children
than had previously been suspected. About a quarter of the

abused children fell into each of the categories: under

13

two years, 2 to 6 years, and 6 to 10 years.

Gil's survey found that 6.25% of all batterings were
fatal and another 8.33% of the children suffered permanent
damage from the one incidence of battering reported. More
women than men abuse. Over 80% of the children were living
in two parent homes. Gil found that abuse existed in all
socio-economic strata. Other studies have shown distribu-
tions sharply skewed toward the lower socio-economic groups,
city dwellers, and homes with only one parent present.

This skewing may be because poor children from fatherless
homes are more likely to be brought to the attention of the
police and social service agencies and to be taken to large
city hospitals where interest in the battering syndrome
leads to reporting.

Gil's incidence rates were undoubtedly low because
many cases of abuse were not reported. Helfer (1968) esti-
mated that 10,000-15,000 children probably are severly in-
jured each year. Fontana (1973) estimated that 10,000
children are severely battered every year, 50,000-75,000
are sexually maltreated, 100,000 are maltreated, and 100,

000 are physically morally, and educationally'neglected..

CHARACTERISTICS OF ABUSIVE PARENTS

The majority of past studies have focused on the abu-
sive parents and have reported a high incidence of insta-
bility, marital difficulties, unemployment, poverty, alco-
holism, social isolation, minor criminal offenses, dis—
honorable discharges, previous unsuccessful marriages, pro-
miscuity, sexual problems, many illnesses, immaturity, and
impulsivity (Barbero and Shaheen, 1967; Bullard, et al,
1967; Ebbin, Gollub, Stein, and Wilson, 1969; Fontana,
Donovan and Wong, 1963; Friedman, 1972; Helfer, 1968; Kempe,
et a1, 1962; Silver, 1968). Many of the abusive parents'
marriages were formed to legitimize unplanned pregnancies
(Barbero, 1967; Fontana, 1963; Schoesser, 1964; Silver,
1968). In many of the homes there was only one parent,
usually the mother, who was left with all the child-rear-
ing responsibilities. In homes in which the father was
physically present, he tended to be extremely passive and
unsupportive of his wife (Ebbin, etial, 1969; Elmer, 1960;
Fontana, et a1,1963).

Not all parents who suffer economic deprivation, mari-

tal problems, or social isolation beat or neglect their

14

15

children. Those who do maltreat their children apparently
have a potential for abuse that they acquired over many
years and usually through four factors: the parents had
been raised in a similar fashion; the non-abusive parent
typically is passive and ungiving; the parents currently
are isolated, and the parents have unrealistic expectations
of their children.

Abusive Parents' Childhood. Typically, abusive

 

parents had been raised in a manner Similar to that which
they currently use in child-rearing. Many had been beaten,
others had been given unrealistic responsibilities in tak-
ing care of their own parents, who considered them as in-
adequate, bad, and deserving of criticism. Frequently
abusive adults' parents had also been raised in the same
manner (Steele G Pollock, 1968). Steele and Pollock felt
that battering parents, due to their own childhoods, were
incapable of providing the basic non-mechanical caregiving
functions of a mature, self-sufficient adult for a help-
less, immature, dependent individual. The parents could
not consistently supply the tenderness, awareness, emo-
tional interaction, and consideration needed by infants.
Often the infants were mechanically cared for, but even

this mechanical caring was fraught with tensions. This

16

lack of nurturance in the mother or father resulted from
failure to identify with a symbiotic, confidence-producing
caregiver. The parents saw their own caregivers as unsym-
‘pathetic, non-nurturing, and unempathetic. Despite this
perception, the parents continued to look for these quali-
ties in their own parents and in others. Thus, the abusive
parent's childhood resulted in an ambivalence towards care-
giving and in uncertainty about the rewards or punishments
likely from people they might look to for help. As a con-
sequence the abusive parents became afraid to trust anyone
and further insulated themselves from any rewarding rela-
tionships. They carried this lack of trust into marriage
usually with partners very similar to themselves. Thus,
both parents in each family were unable to ask for what
they needed or to give what was needed. The last person
they felt they could successfully turn to was the child

and when the child "failed" them, the previously inhibited
aggression broke out.

Since the evidence is so strong that abused child-
ren become abusive parents, one expects that these child-
ren should display the same psychological tendencies as the
parents. Melnick and Hurley (1969) found that the Patho-
gensis Index of the Thematic Apperception Test (Karon, 1963)

distinguished between abusive and non-abusive parents.

17

In the same way the current study hypothesized that the
abused children would score higher than non-abused children
on the Pathogenesis Index.

Non-supportiveness of Abusive Parents' Spouses.

 

Elmer's intensive study of mothers of five infants with
failure to thrive documented the importance of the father
in the mother's ability to care for her children (Elmer,
1960). In three cases infant neglect became critical after
the father had deserted; in another family the father was
emotionally unsupportive, and in the fifth family, both

of the parents were too frightened by the infant's heart
condition to function adequately as parents. Not only were
the fathers emotionally or physically absent, but these
families were also almost completely isolated from the
community and any outside support; .Elmer (1967a) found
that in the homes of abused minors in which the impulse
ridden fathers were present there was more quarrelling,
excessive drinking, and mutual parental abuse than occurred
in non-abusive families of the same socio-economic class.

Abusive Parents' Isolation. Fontana (1963) found

 

that the abusive families had problems which had intensified
by the time the abused child was born. These problems were
intensified by isolation from outside sources of emotional

help. Often abusive parents are not fully integrated into

18

their communities and actively resist attempts to get them
to participate in outside activities (Elmer, 1967a).

Abusive Parents' Unrealistic Expectations. Abusive

 

parents expect their children to satisfy the parents' needs
and insist on a high level of adult-like performance from
even the youngest children (Bender, 1940; Cohen, 1966; Fon-
tana, 1973; Green, 1968; Helfer, 1968; Leonard, et a1 1966;
Morris, 1963; Morse, Sahler and Friedman, 1970; Steele 5
Pollock, 1968). The child's crying or sickness is seen as
withdrawal of love and support and as a deliberate attempt
to frustrate and humiliate the parent (Helfer, 1968; Koel,
1967; Silver, 1968). If the child does not give the grati-
fication the parents need and expect,the parents experience
intense frustration and react with rage,

Additional Factors Affecting Abusive Parents. Study-

 

ing the conditions likely to lead to abuse, Elmer (1967a)
found that while sex, ordinal birth position, and age of
the mother did not differentiate between abusive and non-
abusive matched samples, younger mothers were less capable
of handling the family difficulties than older mothers and ,
that sex and ordinal position could be of importance if
they had particular significance to the abusive parent.
Several factors distinguished abusive from non-abusive pa-

rents. Abusive families were more likely to have three or

19

more children, to have one or more children conceived out
of wedlock, and the birth of a sibling was likely to occur
within one year before or after the battering incident.

The importance of length of time between births was con-
firmed by Leonard et a1, 0966), who also found that batter-
ed children often had siblings born within a year of bat-
tering.

Steele and Pollock (1968) found that while the bat-
tering parents differed little from parents in most ways,
they were more action oriented and tended to give in more
to their impulses. All the battering parents had under-
lying conflicts with strong, unsatisfied oral dependent
needs. Most had unresolved identity conflicts, depressive
trends, or noteworthy feelings of worthlessness. They were
suspicious, untrusting, and felt victimized. Their depres-
sion was usually of the anaclitic type. They still partly
identified themselves with little boys and girls who had
been orally deprived. Because abusive parents apparently
have strong, unsatisfied oral needs (Steele 8 Pollock,l968),
it is unlikely that they can adequately gratify their child-
ren; therefore it is hypothesized that abused and neglected
children will demonstrate high oral deprivation. Evidence
of oral deprivation was found among prisoners convicted of

bizarre and senseless murders who had been abused as child-

20

ren (Satten, Menningar, Rosen and Wayman, 1960; Silver, Dub-

lin and Lourie, 1969).

Family Patterns Among Neglecting Parents

 

Although less research has been done on the parents
of neglected children, it appears that their family pattern
is comparable to that of parents of battered children (Leo-
nard, 1966). In families with a failure to thrive child,
it is often observed that the children were born in quick
succession. The interval between the birth of the failure
to thrive baby and his siblings was usually 18 months or
less. Six of the mothers in Leonard's study had been preg-
nant prior to their marriages, and only one of them had
married the father of the infant. The fathers, like those
in battering families, were passive and ineffectual as hus—
bands and fathers and acted immaturely. Every failure to
thrive baby was unwanted during the pregnancy. These mo-
thers also had not had nurturing relationships with their
own mothers. Not uncommonly there were complications in
the birth, and the new infant taxed an already overburden-

ed mother beyond her limited capacities.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGGRESSIVE TENDENCIES IN
THE ABUSED CHILD

The development of aggressive tendencies, particular-
ly as they have occurred in abusive parents, has been the
subject of much concern. According to Freud (1963) aggres-
sive tendencies and death wishes occur in the pregenital
stages of development. Isaacs and Land (1968) concluded
that children of two years may have death wishes against
their parents as part of a normal stage of diffuse defiance
with self-assertion against the world, which may start in
the tenth or eleventh month due to the child's sense of
helplessness and frustration against parental restrictions.
Thus, the family situation becomes the scene where love,
hate, and longing arise even during the first year of life.

Spitz (1968) also noted that parents' physical re-
strictions on the child during the first months of life
create a conflict in the child between the hostile and the
aggressive reactions these prohibitions arouse and the de-
veloping libidinal love attachment toward the parents. The
child's ego begins to deal with the intrapsychic conflict
between six and eighteen months by identifying with the
aggressive aspects of the parents. Eventually the child

begins to play the parent's role and applies the prohibi-

21

22

tions first towards the parents, primarily through the use
of the word "no," and then, because of negative responses
toward the parents, toward the self, and eventually toward
others. Thus begin the super-ego.

Steele and Pollock (1968) also felt that the genesis
of super-ego rudiments probably begins through an identi-
fication with early parental aggression. The identifica-
tion is of great importance for the battered child who
identified either with the aggressive or the passive parent
and hence carries the abusive family constellation into the
next generation. This is especially true because the iden-
tification process is coupled with a lack of appropriate
models of impulse control. The resulting punitive super-
ego leades to a strong sense of guilt which persists through-
out the child-parent's life, as does a pervasive sense of
inferiority. When the child disobeys, he or she appears
to the parent as the embodiment of the parent's own badness
and stimulates all of the guilt-laden aggression with super—
ego approval. The infant's disobedience is seen as immoral
and deserving of destruction. The punitive super-ego does
not preclude the existence in the parents of an ego-ideal.
The parents approach infant care with incongruous desires:

to do right by the infant; and to have the infant respond

23

"appropriately". Another factor facilitates the identi-
fication of the child with the aggressive or the passive
parent. The parents' need for the child's love causes the
parents to prohibit the child from looking elsewhere for

models.

Expression of Aggression

 

While it is the children who die that create public
furor, it is the children who live that are not only the
abusive parents of tomorrow but also the murderers, crimi-
nals, suicides, psychotics, neurotics, failures, and men-
tal and physical retards (Bender and Curran, 1940; Duncan,
Frazier, Litin and Johnson and Barran, 1958; Frank, 1963;
Gladstow, 1965; Glaser, et a1, 1968; Green, 1968; Satten
et a1, 1960; Silver, 1968; Toolan, 1962).

Elmer (1967a) found via Rorschachs, interviews, and
the Draw a Man test that abused children were significant-
ly deviant from the norm on expression of anger. And,
their mothers confirmed that the children had either fre-
quent outbursts of violent temper or complete inhibition
of any temper.

Duncan (1958) found that adolescents who had commit-

ted serious crimes such as murder or sexual assault, had

O

24

a history of parental fostering of the offense. Satten
(1960), in his study of bizarre, apparently senseless mur-
ders by "sane" men, found that they had been predisposed
by early and now often unconscious traumatic experiences
to severe lapses in ego control which made the open ex-
pression of primitive violence possible. Mostly they had
been exposed to extreme parental violence which often accom-
panied the parents' sexual intercourse. Satten felt that
the murderers had experienced early and severe oral depri-
vations. This oral deprivation may have been associated
with the prisoners' inability to discharge their aggressive
impulses verbally rather than in an aggressive "all or
none" manner. Satten also hypothesized that the murderers
may have been deflected suicides, and that relatively un-
known and innocuous victims were seen as provocative and
suitable targets for aggression because the strangers had
lost their objective reality and had assumed an identity
in the murderers' unconscious childhood configuration.
Bender and Curran (1940) in their study of children
and adolescents who kill found that many of these children
had been abused or deprived of parental love and care.
Their parents had forced these children into passive roles

which they reacted against later in life through brutality

25

and criminality in an attempt to disprove their feelings
of inferiority. The aggression which they felt as a re-
sult of their upbringing became associated with guilt be-
cause it was initially directed at the parents. The ag-
gression was then transformed into preoccupations with
death which they directed against all aound them, includ-
ing themselves.

Silver, Dublin and Lourie (1969) in their study of
battered and neglected children found that many notorious
murders had been the subject of merciless abuse as child-
ren. Their longtitudinal study of children indicated that
the children used identification with the aggressor or the
victim as their primary defense. They entered adulthood
with unmet oral needs and primitive patterns of interac-
tion with peOple and society.

Green (1968) studied school-age schizophrenic child-
ren who committed painful or destructive acts upon their
own bodies. Almost invariably the children had suffered
physical punishment from one or both parents. The parents
alternated physical abuse and overt threats with emotional
abandonment, withdrawal of love and understimulation (ne-
glect). Green hypothesized that the schizophrenia may have

been the result of the emotional deprivation. A vicious

26

circle seemed to occur with abuse increasing the child's
aberrant behavior, which provoked parental violence and
then withdrawal, which stimulated the child to seek the
painful experience in order to experience the tactile and
kinesthetic stimulations which it could not secure during
parental withdrawal. By equating negative attention with
love these children equated love with being hurt and so
established a pattern of inviting harm and of playing the
victim.

Abuse may also interfere with the child's self-pre—
servative instinct (Freud, 1963). The self-preservative
instinct can fail if there is a lack of adequate cathexis
of the child's body, if the caregiver does not provide an
adequate model for the child's self-preservative instinct,
or if the child is deprived of love objects. Self-destruc-
tiveness offers several advantages to the abused child.

It enables the ego to defend against the aggressive drive.
It can also be a way of asking for love and comfort from
the rejecting parent. If the self-destructiveness does
elicit love and comfort or even attention, self-destruc-
tiveness takes on a secondary gain.

The evidence thus indicates that abused children dis-

play two conflicting tendencies in expressing aggression.

27

Some act out their underlying hostility, as demonstrated

by the often violent behavior of formerly abused children

in their adult lives. But, the severe punishment abused
children receive acts as a powerful inhibitor of aggression;
thus, some demonstrate no outward display of temper (Elmer
and Greg, 1967b). Because it is not clear when the abused
child's hypothesized punitive super-ego will break through,
we expect in this study that abused children will exhibit

a bimodal distribution of measures of aggression with peaks

both above and below that of the control group.

THE PRESENT INVESTIGATION

As already indicated, battering and neglect occur
frequently in the same children and produce similar psycho-
logical results, with the children exhibiting physical, de-
velopmental and mental retardation and deviant speech pat-
terns; poor body hygiene; apathy to stimulation; "radar
gaze;” and irritability and withdrawal when approached, es-
pecially by their parents. Thus many authors (Barbero 8
Shaheen, 1967; Connell, 1968; Fontana, 1973; Guandolo, 1968;
Morse et a1, 1970; Silver, 1968; Weston, 1968) conclude that

neglect and battering are different degrees of the same

28

phenomenon, with battering the last phase of a continuum
ranging from mild deprivation or malnourishment through
general neglect, to neglect accompanied by verbal abuse and
some hitting, to severe beating or even killing. Neglect
can be as damaging both physically and emotionally as bat-
tering. While not all investigators agree with the contin-
uum described above (cf., Gladston, 1965), all seem to agree
that the neglected child is often later the battered child.
This study, therefore, assessed whether or not bat-
tered and neglected children differ from each other and
from a control group on various measures, including orality,

pathogenesis, toy choice, trust, and aggression.
SUMMARY OF HYPOTHESES

The previously reviewed research and theorizing about
abused children lead to the following hypotheses about their
expected behavior in an experimental situation:

1. Both abused and neglected children will
demonstrate higher oral deprivation
than a matched control group. (See
Appendix B for specific orality hypoth-
eses related to the measuring instru-
ment.)

This hypothesis is based on the data reviewed regard-

29

ing the inadequacy of the nurturing that abused and neglect-
ed children typically receive. Anger at oral deprivation
might well be expressed as an increase in "Oral Sadism" for
both abused and neglected children. Also, in order to
examine the possibility that the treatment the abused and
neglected children have received has heightened their over-
all orality, they will also be tested for "Oral Eroticism”.
There is no available information that would suggest pre-
dictions about differences between abused and neglected
children.
2. Abused children will score higher than

neglected children who will in turn

score higher than a matched control

group on a measure of anxiety regarding

physical harm. This fear of physical

harm may or may not be "Castration Anx-

iety" in the psychoanalytic sense.

(See Appendix B for specific anxiety

hypothesis related to the measuring

instrument.)

This hypothesis is based on the differential experi—
ence of the three groups. The abused children have actually
experienced physical harm and, hence, are expected to be
anxious about further potential bodily damage. While the
neglected children have not actually been physically abused,
the inadequate caregiving they have received should make

them more concerned about bodily harm than control group

children who presumably have received adequate care.

30

Abused and neglected children will both
be significantly higher on a measure of
pathogenesis than a matched control group,
but they should not differ significantly
from each other.

The lack of emotional warmth and security, the pat-

terns of child-rearing, and the role reversal which char—

acterize the childhood of abusive parents are repeated again

with their own children. Thus, the parental models of a-

bused children teach them that when conflicting needs exist,

persons in authority tend to meet their own needs rather

than those of their dependents -- a tendency which is mea-

sured by Karon's (1963) Pathogenesis Index for the TAT.

As noted before, Melnick and Hurley (1969) found that the

Pathogenesis Index discriminated between abusing and con-

trol mothers.

’4.

Both abused and neglected children will
score higher than a matched control group
on a TAT measure of aggression, but- they
should not differ significantly from each
other.

Both abused and neglected children will
select more aggressive toys than a matched
control group in a toy selection proce-
dure, but they should not differ signifi-
cantly from each other.

Frustration of needs because of inadequate caregiving

(and even physical harm for the abused children) should

heighten the aggressivity of abused and neglected children.

31

Thus, aggressive toys are likely to have more appeal for
them, in contrast to the control children. Similarly,

one might anticipate that abused and neglected children
would display more aggression in TAT stories. However,
observational evidence indicates that abused and neglect-
ed children have two conflicting tendencies with regard to
aggression: the severe punishment or physical deprivation
inhibits aggression, and the frustration they experience
and the models they see cause them to be aggressive both
toward themselves and others. Thus, abused and neglected
children may exhibit a bimodal distribution with peaks both
above and below that of the control group. Given the small
sample of available subjects, however, it is not possible
to test this possible bimodality.

6. Both abused and neglected children will
take longer to report to an adult the
aggressive activities of other children,
but they should not differ significantly
from each other.

Abused children have personally experienced aggres-
sion, and neglected children frequently have witnessed ag-
gression between their parents. Therefore, such experi-
ences may have raised their tolerance level toward aggres-

sive behavior above that of a matched control group. In

part tolerance of aggression may reflect an inability to

32

empathize with others because the abused and neglected child-

ren's own needs are so strong.

7. Both abused and neglected children will
be more likely than a matched control
group to accept a less desired reward
rather than wait for an adult to bring
them their most preferred reward, but
they should not differ significantly
from each other.

The interactions of battered and neglected children
with their parents have taught them that adults cannot be
trusted and relied upon to keep their promises. Thus, in
a manipulation testing willingness to delay reward, they
are unlikely to trust an adult experimenter to return with
a promised toy and will instead take a less preferred but

certain reward.

CHAPTER II

METHOD

Subjects

 

Subjects were white, latency age children, aged 6
through 10. Appendix D lists the ages of the subjects in
each experimental condition. The latency period was chosen
because during this period the child is less driven by his
impulses, is consolidating the development of his ego, but
has not yet become engaged in the problems of puberty.

Three groups of experimental subjects were tested:
11 battered children, 10 physically neglected children,
and 13 control children. Five of the children in each of
the three groups were female and the rest male. The un-
equal numbers arose from the availability of subjects with-
in the different categories, and not because of subjects
dropping out.

The battered and neglected children were obtained
from Bowen Center, the Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services (IDCFS), the Juvenile Protective Association

(JPA), and the Metropolitan Area Protective Services (MAPS).

33

34

All of the agencies were in Chicago, Illinois. The 13
white, latency age control subjects were obtained from two
Chicago area Parochial Schools. Subjects were judged by
their schools to be from good families, and no evidence of
abuse could be found.

Within each group the subjects had the following
characteristics: 1) All children were from homes where
both a father or father-surrogate and a mother or mother-
surrogate was present frequently for the first five years;
2) All children were from the three lower socio-economic
classes as judged by the location of the family home and
the school or agency reports; 3) All children had at least
one sibling; 4) No child had been in placement outside the
home for more than one year.

Classification in the experimental and control groups
was based on the case and/or school reports the agencies
had compiled. Abuse was restricted to physical abuse. A
child was judged to be neglected on the basis of any of
the following: being left alone or "locked up" for long
periods without adequate supervision; inadequacies in cloth-
ing, nutrition, or medical care severe enough to endanger
the child's health; or chronic truancy with the parents'
consent. Each child included in the study met at least two

of the above criteria. A child was judged to be battered

35

if the child regularly received beatings which were severe
enough to cause injuries such as large welts or bruises
which either required a doctor's care or for which a doc-
tor should have been consulted. While there were cases of
pure neglect, no cases of pure battering could be found in
this socioeconomic class. That is, children judged to be
battered were, also, always neglected. However, the neg-
lect in the battering families usually differed quantita-
tively and qualitatively from that in the pure neglect
families. The battered child usually was not as severely
neglected, or the severe neglect was occasional rather than
constant.

The children in foster homes were wards of IDCFS.

Permission to test them was obtained from that agency's f2:

Guardianship Administrators who supervise their care and
are responsible for them. The rest of the children and
their families received various services from the centers
or schools and the rapport established between them facil-
itated obtaining written parental permission.

No monetary payment was given to any child or family.
However, each child was given a toy as payment for partici-

pation and also as part of an experimental manipulation.

t . 0' I . '
‘w_. bamur.ml¥

 

36

Materials

 

The children were tested by three techniques: the
Blacky Pictures, the Thematic Apperception Test, scored
for Pathogenesis and Aggression, and a modification of
Drabman's (1974) method of measuring "overt aggression”.

Blacky Pictures. The Blacky Pictures were designed

 

to assess the deep recesses of personality by means of
twelve cartoons. The pictures portray a dog, Blacky, in
relation to a group of other dogs: Mama, Papa, and Tippy,
a sibling of unspecified age and sex.

Dog cartoons are used to compensate for the structured-
ness of the stimuli. Blum (1949) felt that human figures
would inhibit projection while animal figures would facili-
tate personal expression while preserving enough reality
so that the subjects could identify themselves freely with
the cartoon figures.

Except for the first cartoon which functions as an
introduction to the characters, each cartoon is designed to
depict a stage of psychosexual development or a type of
object relationship within that development. The cartoons
sequentially assess oral eroticism, oral sadism, anal ex-
pulsiveness or retentiveness, oedipal intensity, masturba-

tion guilt, castration anxiety in males or penis envy in

37

females, identification process, sibling rivalry, guilt
feelings, ego-ideal, and narcissistic or anaclitic love
object.

There have been three successive objective scoring
systems (Blum, 1949, 1951, 1962) all of which have used
four sources of data relevant to each dimension. First
subjects are asked to give a Spontaneous Story, after which
they are asked a series of multiple choice and short an-
swer questions, Inquiry Items, pertinent to the dimension.
Then a third level of response is obtained by having sub-
jects express "Preferences" for the various cartoons. A
fourth source of information consists of subjects' comments
to each card which occur on other cartoons, Related Com-
ments. Subjects get profile scores in terms of three pos-
sible degrees of disturbance on each dimension 0, +, ++.
Blacky is presented to male subjects as the "son" and to
female subjects as the "daughter". However, although Blum
(1949) felt that any differences between male and female
responses were due to chance, there have been divergent
findings about whether female subjects can really view a
dog as female.

Validation Studies. Factor analytic studies of

 

Blum's original data have identified factors corresponding

38

to psychosexual stages for males but have produced mixed
results for females (Neuman’é Salvatore, 1958; Robinson 6
Hendrix, 1966). In an attempt to discover how females
view Blacky, Rossi and Solomon (1961) had females rate
words including Blacky, dog, and cat. Blacky and dog were
labelled as male. Similarly, when Wolfson and Wolff (1956)
had female psychiatric patients rate dog names, Blacky was
classified as male and Tippy as sexually neutral.

In other validation studies focusing particularly on
orality, Blum and Kaufman (1952) found that ulcer patients
wrote more oral stories than normal controls. Blum and
Miller (1951) found that a nine year old girl, rated ex-
tremely oral on the Blacky, ate more ice cream than most
of her classmates, had extreme taste suggestibility, and
was extremely desirous of praise. Kimeldorf and Geiwitz
(1966), using the Blacky, found that heavy smokers were
significantly higher on two of six Blacky oral factors on
cards 1 and 2 than non-smokers. They were higher on "oral
craving" and "playfulness".

Reliability studies. There has been controversy over

 

the reliability of the Blacky with respect to scoring.
Granick and Schefling (1958) reported excellent inter-rater

reliability on the strength of disturbance. Berger and

39

Everstine (1962) and Palmer (1970 felt that while the
reliability was not excellent it was average for projec-
tive tests. Insofar as temporal consistency is concerned,
Berger (1962) found that conflict area patterns were more
reliable in a test-retest study with college males then
were the individual dimensions. Charen (1956a) calculated
test-retest reliability after administering only the mul-
tiple-choice items to tuberculosis patients early in their
illness and again four months later. He reported that the
Blacky yielded conflicting results, with patients showing
either no improvement or regression; whereas other person-
ality tests he administered showed no basic personality
changes. Blum (1956) refuted Charen's claims by stating
that the use of only one of the four sources, especially
the one easiest to distort, was an unfair test. Charen
(1956b) acknowledged that the Inquiry Items are closest

to consciousness and most distortable. However, he con-
tended that since they are part of the Blacky test, they
too should be reliable.

It may be that the main problem with the Blacky is
not its reliability or its ability to differentiate be-
tween known groups, but the fact that there are not scoring
categories worded so that they can disconfirm psychoanaly-

tic theory. Even a neutral response can be interpreted as

40

a denial of a psychosexual problem. (This problem was not
crucial in the present study since it was not designed to
diagnose but to measure differences in psychosexual conflicts
between groups.

Thematic Apperception Test. The TAT, devised by

 

Morgan and Murray (1935) is an instrument widely used in
clinical work and personality research to study the motiva-
tional and emotional condition of the subject.

The complete TAT consists of 20 cards, 19 containing
ambiguous pictures and the 20th blank. The subject is in-
structed to make up a story to each card, to tell what is
happening, what led up to what is happening, and what the
people are thinking and feeling, and to give the outcome.
The subject's responses are analyzed with respect to the
hero with whom the subject is presumed to have identified.
Both Stone's and Karon's scoring systems were used in this
study.

(1) Stone's £1956) Aggression Scoring System. In-

 

terpreting aggressive and non-aggressive responses to a
projective instrument is problematic. The answers may re-
flect either how subjects really behave, or what they be-
lieve is appropriate, or their responses may indicate inner
needs and attitudes that may not be reflected in their be-

havior. Thus, overtly passive children may express great

41

hostility on a test, especially if they are likely to be
punished for overt aggression. Several hostility content
scales have been developed for the TAT (Hafner 6 Murray
1960; Mussen 8 Naylor, 1954; Pittluck, 1950; Stone, 1956).
Most have used scoring schemes which included hostility
subdivided into three types: verbal,physical,and death.
Stone's study used a fairly simple objective scheme
in which each aggressive response was categorized for Death
content, Physical Aggression content, or Verbal Aggression
content. Stone felt that a Death response was the most
indicative of strong aggression and poor control and, hence,
more likely to be related to overt aggression than either
Physical or Verbal Aggression. Similarly, Physical Aggres-
sive responses are stronger and show less control than Ver-
bal Aggressive responses. Because of this, Death responses
were given a weight of 3, while Physical and Verbal Aggres-
sion were weighted 2 and 1 respectively. Responses also
differ as to whether they Show active or potential aggres-
sion, with active responses being considered more likely
to reflect a tendency to really aggress. To take this in-
to account potentials were given half weight. On any parti-

cular card only one score, the highest possible, was given.

42

Validity. The sole validity study of this scoring

 

system was conducted on United States Army prisoners, none
of whom were psychotic, feeble-minded, or suffering from
organic-brain damage. The remaining prisoners were classi-
fied into three groups. Group 1 consisted of soldiers who
had been absent-without-leave (AWOL) only once. Group 2's
soldiers had been AWOL more than once. Group 3's members
had been confined for murder. Stone's scale did not dis-
tinguish between Groups 1 and 2, but it did significantly
differentiate between Group 3 and each of the others. Thus,
the scale did discriminate between assaultive and nonassualt-
ive groups.

Reliability. To test reliability, Stone had three

 

clinical psychologists independently score 120 of the ran-
domly selected TAT stories. Rater reliability ranged be-
tween 89 and 94 percent.

(2) Karon's Pathogenesis Scoring System. Karon

 

(1963) developed the Pathogenesis scale of the TAT. He

felt that schizophrenia was the result of malevolent mother-
ing which began in the oral stage and continued throughout
childhood. The schizophrenogenic mother and the abusive
mother satisfy their own needs when their needs conflict

with those of their children by covertly manipulating the

43

the children. This manipulation and the maternal ambiva-
lence lead to the children being unable to distinguish

their own motivations from that of their mothers' and being
seriously impaired in ego functioning. The children attempt
throughout life to handle the resultant feelings of worth-
lessness by futility attempting to change themselves into
what they believe their mothers want them to be. Since

the child cannot accept the mother as "bad,” the child's
continued failure to obtain her love results in self-con-
demnation. Any attempts by the child to form attachments
with other mothering figures are sabotaged by both the child
and the mother in order to maintain her status as a good
mother relative to a bad world.

Validity. The pathogenesis scale has proven success-
ful not only at differentiating mothers of schizophrenics
from mothers of normals but also less effective therapists
from more effective benign therapists (Meyer 8 Karon, 1967;
Mitchell, 1967, 1969; VandenBos & Karon, 1971). Mitchell
(1969) found that fathers of schizophrenics also had higher
pathogenesis scores than fathers of normals. Thus, the
pathogenesis scale differentiates psychologically destruc-

tive from more constructive individuals.

Melnick and Hurley (1969) found that the pathogenesis

44

score differentiated between abusive and non-abusive mothers
matched on age, social class, and education. Most of the
subjects were lower-class Blacks. They found that the Patho-
genesis Index was negatively correlated with family satis-
faction, self—esteem, ability to empathize with and accept
others, and a need to nurture. Melnick and Hurley concluded
that battering mothers have difficulty in empathizing with
and administering to the needs of their children, coping
with the responsibilities of motherhood, and lack "trust"

in the environment because of their own early emotional de-
privation and frustrated dependency needs and because of

a present lack of emotional support.

Reliability. Using Meyer and Karon's (1967) or

 

Mitchell and Karon's (1967) criteria, the rater reliability
of the pathogenesis scale, calculated using the product-
moment correlations between the two judges used in each
experiment, ranged from .89 to .94. Raters varied from two
naive undergraduates trained in scoring to two trained
clinical psychologists.

Scoring. In order to score a story as pathogenic
there must be an interaction between a dominant and a de-
pendent person in which the dominant person is concerned

only with his or her own needs. If the dominant person is

45

concerned about and takes the dependent person's needs into
account the story is scored benign. If there is no inter-
action between a dominant and a dependent person the story
is scored neutral. Scores for each subject are then com-
puted using the formula P/(P+B) where P is the number of
pathogenic stories and B is the number of benign stories.
Each story must be read in its entirety before it is scored,
and only one score is given to each story.

Drabman and Thomas' Overt Measure of Aggression. In

 

addition to the projective TAT measures of aggression a

more objective measure was desired. This raised a number of
ethical questions about the use of many of the traditional
measures of aggression -- for example the use of shock. In

a personal communication, Albert Bandura (Note I) indicated
that a technique used by Drabman and Thomas (1974) could

both ethically and adequately measure children's tolerance for
aggression, which he considered directly related to their
aggressiveness.

Drabman and Thomas investigated the impact of viewing
filmed violence on children's tolerance for aggression and
willingness to aid others. First each child was introduced
to a play room and told that kindergarten children were

usually observed there. Then some children viewed an

aggressive cowboy film; others saw no film. After this the
child was taken to a room with a videotape monitor. The
Experimenter told the child that he had promised to watch
two children in the previously seen play room and that he
also had to make an important phone call. He enlisted the
child's help as a baby-sitter. The child was to come and
get him in the principal's office if there was any trouble.
All subjects viewed the same videotaped film of children

in a playroom identical to the one they had seen earlier.
The filmed children first played quietly, then became pro-
gressively more destructive, finally pushing, shoving, and
supposedly knocking the camera over. During this period
the Experimenter left the room and waited in the hall until
the child either came to get him or until 70 seconds had
elapsed. All children were reassured that everything was
all right.

Drabman and Thomas' dependent measures were: the
time it took each child to seek adult help after the video-
taped children became disruptive and whether or not the
child waited until the viewed children were abusing each
other before reporting. No differences were found between
the sexes. Results indicated that children who viewed the
aggressive film took significantly longer to report and were

likely to tolerate all but the most violent physical aggres-

47

sion before responding. The fact that all children did not
see a film may have resulted in differential arousal and,
thus, confounded the results. However, Drabman and Thomas
felt that the instructions were so explicit as to make this
unlikely.

A paradigm similar to that used by Drabman and
Thomas was used in this experiment. Among the differences
were: the children were never left alone; the children
viewed no film, (their differential prior exposure to pa-
rental violence was felt to be a more than adequate substi-
tute), and only dependent measure, latency of responses,
was used.

Measures of Trust and Toy Choice as a Measure of

 

Aggression. The children were allowed to pick a toy as their

 

"payment" for the job of helping in the experiment. This
was used to both motivate them and as a measure of aggres-
sion since the toys were ranked according to their aggres-
siveness by a group of psychologists. The toys were divided
into three groups according to their aggressiveness with

the least aggressive toys receiving a score of one and the
most aggressive toys receiving a score of three. Toys which
received a score of one were: a canteen, coloring books,

a jacks set, a magnifying glass, a necklace and earrings
set, a race car and trophy, a tic-tac-toe or numbers puzzle,

and a teen phone. Toys which received a score of two were:

48

a jeep-tank set, a paddle ball, and a punch ball. Toys
which received a score of three were: a gun and a rubber
knife. All of the toys had the same relative monetary value.
At the end of the experiment it was manipulated so
that the child thought another child had received his or
her most desired toy. Each child then had the choice of
accepting another toy or of waiting till the following week
when the Experimenter promised to bring the child's first
choice toy. It was felt that abused children would be less
capable of delaying gratification because they had been
taught by the significant adults in their lives that adults
cannot be trusted to come through for them. Thus, agreeing
to wait was considered to be a measure of trust. In the
end the Experimenter "found" the first choice toy and gave

it to the child whether or not he or she had chosen to wait.

Procedures

 

The children were all picked up at their homes or
schools by the Experimenter or one of the agencies' case-
workers. The children were brought to the Juvenile Protec-

tive Association where all children were tested. Subjects

49

were taken to a room in order to pick the toy they wanted
for participating in the experiment. They were told that
children much younger than themselves were to be tested there
and that the camera, which was pointed at the toys on the
floor, was used to watch the younger children in case the
person who worked with them had to be out of the room. The
room was set up so that it looked like what they would see
later on the videotape. The children were then taken to
the testing room where they were shown the "TV" on which
one could see what was happening in the room they had just
left.

Testing began with the Blacky Pictures since child-
ren find them enjoyable and nonthreatening. Three cartoons
were used: Oral Eroticism, Oral Sadism, and Castration
Anxiety (Penis Envy). While Blum interprets the third car-
toon only as a measure of physical harm that would occur
only in males, it was presumed that the fear of physical
injury could be experienced by both sexes. Techniques
similar to those outlined in Blum's (1951) scoring system
for use with adults were used with the children to make
scoring and interpretation more objective. The questions
were modified somewhat to make them more understandable to
children. (See Appendix B for a complete description of

instructions and questions.) Pretesting showed that child-

50

ren had little or no trouble understanding the rather simple
questions, and this was confirmed with the test sample. The
children then sorted all the cards into two piles: those
they liked and those they did not like. They then picked
one card from each: the one they liked best and the one
they liked least.

Next, TAT cards 2,4, 6GP, 7BM, 9GP, 12M, 18BM, and
18GF were administered. These cards were chosen for two
reasons: each contained more than one person to facilitate
the production of stories about interpersonal interaction,
and most of these cards had been shown previously to dif-
ferentiate between test and control samples. The follow-
ing instructions were used:

Since you did so well on the last story-
telling game, I thought we'd play another
one. I want you to make up a story for
each of these pictures. Tell what has
happened before and what is happening now.
Say what the people are feeling and think—
ing and how it will come out. You can make
up any‘kind of story you please. Do you
understand? Here is the first picture.
See how well you can do.
If the story was unclear, the subjects were asked, ”And
what happens next in your story?" After a good story the

Experimenter would commend the child. If the story was

too short, she would say "That was an interesting story,

51

but it would have been even better if it were a little
longer." Occasionally, some minor prompting was neces-
sary. Each story was written by the Experimenter as the
child told it.

The overt measure of tolerance of aggression was
chosen because it had been shown to cause no emotional
upset in children (Drabman 8 Thomas, 1974). Basically,
the child's help was enlisted by the Experimenter. That
is, the child acted as a babysitter, via closed circuit
television, for two younger children seen apparently
playing in the room which the child saw enroute to the
testing room. The closed circuit television was really
hooked to a videotape of two child actors who interacted
with steadily increasing aggressiveness. The videotape
was made by the Experimenter and the voices were dubbed
using two young high school girls who were majoring in
drama.

It was necessary to provide a reason why the Experi-
menter could not monitor the TV set herself. This was
done by bolting the TV set to a table and the table to
a wall. The TV was oriented so that it could not be
seen while using the telephone in the far corner of the
room. The phone was wired to ring when the Experimenter

pushed a concealed button. A similar button started the

52

videorecorder.

When the TAT was finished,the Experimenter would
ring the telephone bell and pretend to be in conversa-
tion with someone who was about to bring two more child—
ren to be tested into the first room the children had
seen. She then explained to the children that she had
been asked to use the TV set to watch the children. She.
turned on the TV and started the videorecorder. The
first part of the videotape showed the playroom the
child had previously seen. She then again caused the
phone to ring and asked if the child would watch the
screen and listen, via an earphone, and notify the Ex-
perimenter if the children acted bad in any way. The
earphone was necessary so that the Experimenter would
seem to have no way of knowing what the video-taped
children were doing, (See Appendix A for complete in-
structions).

On the tape the two children started off playing
nicely. But, as the tape proceeded, the children be-
gan to exchange insults, to knock over each other's
blocks, and to interact in an increasingly aggressive
way until the TV camera was apparently knocked over in

a chase and a struggle which caused the screen to go

53

blank. The vituperations and the struggles continued at an

even more intense level on the sound portion until the micro-

phone was ostensibly knocked out of commission. The point

in time when the child notified the Experimenter that the

children "in the other room" were misbehaving was read off

the automatic dial on the videorecorder. The length of

time was taken as a measure of tolerance of aggression. It

also indicated the child's willingness to help others.
After administering several other tests which the

agencies felt would be of benefit to them, the Experi-

menter again took the child into the first room. The

toy which had been chosen was missing. The Experiment-

er said that the other lady had probably given it to

one of the other children. She told the child that she

would bring the toy within a week or that he or she

could choose another toy. After the child decided to wait

or to choose another toy, the Experimenter would "find"

the first choice toy in a drawer and give it to the child.
The children then were returned home. There was no

debriefing because information about adult deception

could be harmful, especially to children who had already,

frequently, been deceived and disappointed by adults.

CHAPTER III

RESULTS

Orality

The first hypothesis, that abused and neglected child-
ren would show higher oral deprivation than a matched
control group, was tested using the Blacky Pictures Test,
Cards 1 and 2. For this test five raters scored each
picture independently both before and after discussing
and resolving discrepant scores that resulted from either
misrecordings or misunderstandings of the scoring guide-
lines. The correlation matrix of rater's scores is
shown in Table 1, Appendix C for both before and after
discussion. Before discussion, the correlations ranged
from .80 to .94; after discussion, from .91 to .99.

Cards 1 and 2, which corresponded, respectively, to
Oral Eroticism and Oral Sadism, were scored for both
overall score and spontaneous story and four analyses of
variance were performed. As indicated in Table l the
first hypothesis was not confirmed, since none of the

F ratios involving the abuse condition was significant.

54

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE 0F ORALITY MEASURES

55

TABLE 1

 

 

 

 

mme g: MS _§
Oral Eroticism
Spontaneous Story
Sex (A) 1 96.87 5.97*
Abuse (B) 2 1.48 .09
AB 2 .24 .01
§§_within conditions 28 16.20
Overall Score
Sex (A) 1 30.90 1.85
Abuse (B) 2 4.51 .27
AB 2 9.70 .58
§§_within conditions 28 16.69
Oral Sadism
Spontaneous Story
Sex (A) 1 13.81 .71
Abuse (B) 2 .92 .05
AB 2 21.57 1.11
§§_within conditions 28 19.42
Overall Score
Sex (A) 1 3.60 .26
Abuse (B) 2 25.33 1.82
AB 2 .85 .06
§§_within conditions 28 19.42
*P< .01
As further exploration of the Orality hypothesis, a

chi-square analysis was performed on inquiry items numbers

2 and 4 of Card 2, Oral Sadism using Blum's (1949) scoring

method. Contrary to expectations, no significant differ—

ence was found in analyses of response vs. abuse condition

summing over sex for either question (see Table 6, Appendix

C). Chi-square analyses of responses by either sex alone

were not attempted because partitioning the small sample

would result in frequencies of less than 5 subjects in half

the cells.

56

Anxiety Regarding Physical Harm

 

The second hypothesis, that the abused children would
- score higher than the neglected children who would in
turn score higher than the matched control group on a
measure of anxiety regarding physical harm, was tested
via Blacky Card 6. Although Card 6 supposedly measures
Penis Envy in females and Castration Anxiety in males,

it was felt that it might be an adequate measure of anx-
iety regarding physical harm in both sexes. The same
raters and scoring procedures were used for this Blacky
card as for Cards 1 and 2, and the same levels of inter-
rater correlations were obtained (see Table 1, Appendix
C). Although no hypotheses were formulated regarding
possible sex differences on Card 6, separate analyses

by sex were performed in addition to a combined analysis.
The card was scored and analyzed for both overall score
and spontaneous story (Table 2 presents a summary of the
findings). No significant effects were found for females
only or for the the combined sample. For males, however,
the neglected group was significantly higher than the
control group, as hypothesized. On the other hand, the

outcome for the abused group disconfirmed the hypothesis

52

since the mean for the abused group was lower than that.
for the neglected group and indistinghishable from that
of the control group.

TABLE 2
ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF FEAR OF HARM MEASURES

 

 

SOURCE g: as_ E.

 

Castration Anxiety-Males Only
Spontaneous Story
Abuse 2 0.00 0.00
§§_within conditions 16 0.00

Overall Score
Abuse 2 7.37 3.93*
§§_within conditions 16 1.88

Penis Envy—Females Only
Spontaneous Story

Abuse 2 .27 1.00
§§_within conditions 12 .27

Overall Score
Abuse 2 4.07 .62
§§_within conditions 12 6.57

Combined Score for Both Sexes-Fearwar Harm
Spontaneous Story

Sex (A) 1 .147 1.28
Abuse (B) 2 .155 1.35
AB 2 .155 1.35
§§_within conditions 28 .11
Overall Score
Sex (A) 1 16.16 4.16
Abuse (B) 2 5.68 1.46
§§_within conditions 28 3.89

 

fl; <:.OS

58

TAT Pathogenesis

 

The third hypothesis, that abused and neglected child-
ren would both be significantly higher on a measure of
pathogenesis than a matched control group, was tested
using Meyer and Karon's (1967) Scoring System for Patho-
genesis. Five raters scored each card independently.

A discussion session was held to resolve any misrecord-
ing or misunderstanding. The correlation matrix of rat-
er's scores is shown in Table 2 Appendix C for both be-
fore and after discussion. Before discussion the corre-
lations ranged from .66 to .95, and after discussion,
from .84 to .98. The post-discussion scores were used
for the analyses. The standard measure used was the
Pathogenesis Index (PI), where P1 = P/P+B and P is the
number of pathogenic responses and B is the number of
benign responses. Thus PI is the proportion of all patho-
genic responses to all non-neutral responses. The modal
score on each card was used to calculate PI for each
subject. As shown in Table 3, an analysis of variance
of these scores disclosed no significant findings; thus

the hypothesis was not confirmed.

59

TABLE 3

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF PATHOGENESIS SCORES

 

 

 

.mmeE g5 gg 5

All Cards - Pathogenic Index
Sex (A) 1 0.01 0.25
Abuse (B) 2 0.01 0.18
AB 2 0.03 0.56
§§_within conditions 28 1.44

All Cards - Total Number of P's
Sex (A) 1 7.62 2.37
Abuse (B) 2 .23 .07
AB 2 .23 .07
§§_within conditions 28 89.93

All Cards - Total Number of B's
Sex (A) 1 0.50 0.25
Abuse (B) 2 0.35 0.17
AB 2 1.15 0.56
§§_within conditions 28 125.0

 

Separate Analyses of Variance were performed on the
total number of benign responses scored in each cell and
on the total number of pathogenic responses scored in
each cell since it was conceivable that one of these
might have distinguished one abuse condition from another.
As shown in Table 3, which summarizes these analyses, no

significant effects were found.

69

A card-by—card analysis of the total number of patho-
genic responses and of the total number of benign reSpon-
ses was then performed in an effort to detect any effects
that might have been diluted by the inclusion of cards
not showing the effect. Since this analysis tests eight
cards at the .05 level, the probability thatrunmaof them
would show a significant effect by chance is p = (.95)8 =
0.66. Thus, the probability is .34 that in doing such
an analysis at least one result will erroneously be
labeled significant at the .05 level. The findings were
hardly beyond chance expectations. Only 3 of the 16
analyses showed significant differences. Because these
were rather secondary, post facto analyses, they are

summarized in Table 3, Appendix C.

TAT Aggression Scores

 

To test hypothesis 4, that abused and neglected child-
ren would be either significantly more or less aggressive
than control children, four raters independently scored
TAT cards for aggression. They then discussed them to
eliminate recording errors and misinterpretations of the
scoring criteria. The inter-rater correlations for scores

on the aggression scale ranged from .82 to .88 with an

61

average of .85 before discussion. After discussion all
correlations were .99 (see Table 4, Appendix C). The
scores after discussion were used in the ANOVA. On

each card, the scores of the four raters were summed to
give a total card score. One ANOVA was performed on the
aggregate scores over all cards. As shown in Table 4,
there was no significant effect at the predesignated .05
level. Plots of the aggression scores were made for each
abuse condition separately but no special distribution
effects, such as bimodality were obvious (see Figure 1).

Thus, the hypothesis was not confirmed.

TABLE 4

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF TAT AGGRESSION SCORES

 

 

 

SOURCE 25 111:9. 5
Total Aggression Score (Sum of all 8 Cards)
Sex (A) 1 31.66 1.68
Abuse (B) 2 13.53 .72
AB 2 16.23 .86
SS within conditions 266 18.81

 

A card-by-card analysis was performed for the TAT
aggression scores. As in the Pathogenesis card-by-card
analysis, the number of significant TAT findings was not

beyond chance expectations (see Table 5, Appendix C).

~m@HMU u£mwm Haw» mmuoom COHmmmhmmw &m& mo mozmsmmhm .N mmDUHk

 

 

62

 

 

 

 

 

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a, q . . IN 1 m ..d. 4 I4 ‘ q d - d - _
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63

Aggressive Toy Choice

 

The fifth hypothesis, that both abused and neglected
children would select more aggressive toys than a matched
control group in a toy selection procedure, was analyzed
via chi—square. As shown in Table 5, which presents a
summary of these analyses, toy choice by abuse condition
summing over sex yielded no significant effect. Thus,
the hypothesis was not confirmed. Since some cell fre-
quencies did not reach the necessary minimum of S, a
more conservative test was performed by collapsing toy
categories. As shown in Table 6, which summarizes these

tests, this analysis also did not support the hypothesis.

TABLE 5

CHI-SQUARE ANALYSES FOR TOY CHOICE

 

 

CONDITION x2

 

Toy Choice by Abuse
Summing over Sex .933

Toy Choice by Abuse
Males only 2.163

Toy Choice by Abuse
Females only .682

Toy Choice by Sex
Summing over Abuse 16.33*

 

*p 4<:.01

64

TABLE 6
CHI-SQUARE ANALYSES FOR TOY CHOICE

COMBINING TOY CHOICE CATEGORIES 1 AND 2

 

 

CONDITION X

 

Toy Choice by Abuse
Summing over sex .736

Toy Choice by Abuse 1.663
Males only

Toy Choice by Abuse
Females only 0.0

Toy Choice by Sex
Summing over Abuse 14.64*

 

fl9<1Au

Tolerance of Aggression

 

The sixth hypothesis, that both abused and neglected
children would take longer to report to an adult the
aggressive activities of other children, was tested by
measuring the latency of response to the videotaped ag-
gression. As summarized in Table 7, an analysis of

variance of the data revealed a significant abuse effect.

65

TABLE 7
ANALYSIS OF LATENCY OF

RESPONSE TO VIDEOTAPED AGGRESSION

 

 

SEX BY ABUSE ANOVA

df MS F
Sex 1 1.8 .01
Abuse 2 2332.6 6.35*
Interaction 2 26.2 .07
§§_within condition 28 367.3

*Significant abuse effect at p < .01

 

Newman-Kuhls Comparison

Condition Means
Neglect (N) 116.7
Abuse (A) 99.2
Control (C) 87.3

Differences between Column Means

 

_A_ _C_
N 17.5*** 29.4**
A -- 11.9

Newman-Kuhls Critical Range

CRN-K = q(r,dfwg) MSwg ; q is the studentized range,
—§;———' r is the separation of groups
MS is the between-groups mean

25 is the harmonic mean of the
in the columns

 

 

r = 2 r = 3
CR 95 16.8 20.2
CR 99 22.6 25.9
** "N" - "C" difference is significant at p.< .01

*** "N" - "A" difference is significant at p < .05

square
subjects

66

As Figure 2, which portrays the distribution of report-
ing times, indicates the neglect group's mean is high-
est (116.7) followed by the abused group's mean (99.2)

followed by the control group's mean (87.2).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 ABUSE
g 4
g3
g2
81
tuo
6
5L ['—
4 NEGLECT
3r
21-
1
.
0 1 HVLIIIJ 1
70 80 90 100 116 I2 30
5
4 CONTROL
3-
2r-
1' lflfln
0 pg. _
_j\/ 70 80 90100 110120130

TIME

FIGURE 2. Frequency Distribution of Latency of
Response to Videotaped Aggression

'11 IIIII‘

LII! I‘llluilllT‘II

I

“h .~.___ ... v

67

Part of the hypothesis was confirmed by a Newman-Kuhls
comparison which indicated that the neglect group dif-
fered significantly from the control group (p < .01).
The rest of the hypotheses were not confirmed; the
abused group did not differ significantly from the con-
trol group, nor were the abused and neglected group

equal in their latency of reporting.

Willingness to Delay Reward

 

The seventh hypothesis, that both abused and neglect-
ed children would be more likely than a matched control
group to accept a less desired reward rather than wait
for an adult to bring them their most preferred reward,
was tested by a chi-square analysis. This analysis
tested the number of children in each condition of sex
and abuse who accepted or rejected the offer to receive
their most preferred toy later rather than take a second
choice toy immediately. Although no hypotheses were
formulated regarding possible sex differences, separate
analyses by sex were performed in addition to a combined
analysis. Table 8 presents a summary of these analysis.
It indicates that the hypothesis was confirmed only for

females.

68

TABLE 8

ANALYSIS OF DECISIONS

REGARDING POSTPONEMENT OF GRATIFICATION

 

Conditions X2
Accept/Reject by Abuse

Summing over Sex 1.716
Accept/Reject by Abuse

Males only 1.658
Accept/Reject by Abuse

Females only 7.800*
Accept/Reject by Sex

Summing over Abuse 2.660

 

*p (I .05

The control females

appeared more willing to accept post-

ponement than either the control males or the abused or the

neglected children of each sex. No significant effects were

found for acceptance by abuse category for males, or for

acceptance by abuse category summing over sex.

Additional Findings

 

While the Analyses of Variance for the Orality data

69

as shown in Table 1,did not support the hypothesized
abuse effect, an unanticipated main effectfor sex was
found. For Oral Eroticism, spontaneous story, females
scored significantly higher than males. A second un-
hypothesized sex effect occurred in the analysis of
toy choice. Males made significantly more aggressive

toy choices than did females.

Summary of Results

 

The analyses revealed three significant results
relevant to abuse: (1) Fear of physical harm was signi-
ficantly higher for the neglected males than for either
the abused males or the control males; (2) among females
the control group was more willing to postpone gratifi-
cation than either of the other groups; (3) the neglect-
ed group took significantly longer than either the a-
bused or the control groups to notify the Experimenter
of the increasing aggression in the videotape test. In
addition there were two significant sex effects: (1)
females were significantly higher than males on the Oral
Eroticism Scale of the Blacky; (2) males picked more

aggressive toys than the females.

CHAPTER IV
DISCUSSION

This study was designed to be an experimental one
with objective measures. However, an understanding
of the results is aided by clues which are largely sub-
jective, based on direct contact with and observation
of abused and neglected children and their parents.
Where feasible, this section is organized on to parallel

that of the Results section.

Orality

The hypothesis that abused and neglected children
would manifest more oral deprivation was not supported.
This hypothesis was based on the assumption that abuse
or neglect would first occur during the oral stage of
development as reported in the majority of the litera-
ture. As it turned out, it was not possible to dis-
cover when the first incident of abuse or neglect had

really occurred. In all cases the occurrence was be‘

70

Ci!
la<
ret
in

fer

and

71

fore the age of five, but more precise data were not
available. Actually abuse can start at any age and be
the result of some precipitating incident. This is es-
pecially true if the pathological psychodynamics of

the abusive parent are set off by the child's reaching
a particular developmental stage. For example, some
abusing parents are upset by the intense care a small
infant needs; others enjoy this dependence but are
disturbed by a two-year old child's attempts at inde-
pendence. One mother seen in one of the agencies in—
cluded in this study was very nurturing to each subse-
quent infant until he or she was replaced by a new
baby. At this point, the older child was placed in a
crib and left there. There were seven children in five
cribs. All of these children were severely malnourished
and filthy. The new baby, however, received excellent
care.

Thus, because we lack data regarding the first in-
cident of abuse or neglect, we do not know whether the
lack of support for the first hypothesis reflects theo-
retical or methodological inadequacies. Differences
in onset of abuse and neglect might lead to very dif-
ferent levels of orality. Perhaps with better reporting

and record keeping, future researchers will be able

to test the orality hypothesis more adequately. .4;

Fear of Harm

 

In the analysis of Blacky Card 6, a significant
effect was found for males only. According to Blum
(1949) this card measures castration anxiety in male.
and penis envy in female; thus, theoretically it

should evoke different reactions from boys than from s;u’:

 

girls. Observations of the subjects behavior support-
ed this expectation. Many of the boys avoided the
card by quickly putting it down. One boy threw the
card down. Two boys said they "hated" the card, No
such reaction was observed with the girls. Thus, the
present observations lend support to Blum's contention
that this card measures castration anxiety. They also _;~
reinforce questions raised in Chapter II regarding the
Blacky Test's validity for females. Girls seem to have
a harder time viewing Blacky as females than boys have
viewing Blacky as males. It was observed that many of
the girls, as contrasted with only a few of the youngest
boys, vacillated about Blacky's sex. They would refer

to Blacky as her one time and as him the next.

73

In view of such different behavior, one might expect
a significant sex effect. Actually, as noted previously
(See Chapter III), there was a significant effect only
for neglected boys. Thus, the findings only partially
support expectations regarding group differences, even
considering only the nineteen males subjects included
in this study.

Why did the abused boys show so little anxiety? The
small sample size could have produced a relatively large
sampling error. This drawback, however, could not be
overcome. The sample used exhausted all the available
subjects in the metropolitan Chicago area who met the
experimental criteria for being abused or neglected.
Possibly, in the future larger samples might become
easier to obtain as the public's awareness of the child
abuse problem grows and its reluctance to report cases
of abuse or neglect diminishes.

Aside from sampling considerations, it is possible
that abused boys displayed so little castration anxiety
on the Blacky in the face of the suggestion of physical
violence or mutilation because of an "emotional habit-
uation” effect. This effect has been noted in experi-
ments in which subjects watched a victim subjected to

pain. As the length of time the subjects were exposed

74

to the painful scene increased, emotional arousal as mea-
sured by galvanic skin responses (GSR) progressively
decreased (Berger 8 Everstine, 1962). Similar results
were reported for males who watched a film of a primi-
tive ritual called, "subincision" (Lazurus 8 Alfert, 1964;
Speisman, Lazurus 6 Davidson, 1964). An abused child or
one with abused siblings has plenty of opportunity to
become habituated to violence. Of the three groups, one
can expect that the abused group will have the highest
frequency of habituation; and the control, the lowest
since they have not been either abused or neglected. In
future research the possible role of habituation could

be assessed by measuring galvinic skin response. A
higher mean GSR for the abused group would be evidence
against the habituation effect. The plausibility of the
explanation will also be discussed in connection with

the videotape measure of aggression.

Another important factor is whether the subject tend-
ed to identify more with Blacky, the onlooker, or with
Tippy, the victim. If the identification is with Tippy,
then the card is likely to be more frightening than if it
is with Blacky. In fact, if the subject is identifying
with Blacky he or she may even be pleased that the sibl-

ing is the victim either because of relief that it is not

75

occuring to the observer or because of sibling animosity.

Pathogenesis and TAT Aggression

 

The failure of the TAT to turn up any significant
effects either on Karon's Pathogenesis Index or the Stone
Aggression Scale may indicate that these instruments
need to be changed or adapted for younger ages. Neither
has ever been used with children. It may also be that
at the ages of the subjects used, children in general
tend to score in a manner that is considered pathogenic
or aggressive in adults. This is suggested by the fact
that in the total sample there were 3.7 times as many
pathogenic responses as there were benign ones, and the
children's stories were highly aggressive. Thus, the
general extremity of cildren's scores might mask possi-
ble group differences on these measures.

In scoring for the Pathogenesis Index stories are
labelled benign only if the dominant person takes the
interest of a dependent person into consideration. Thus,
if a child is unable to take the role of the other, vir-
tually all of his stories will be either pathogenic or

nonscorable. According to Piaget (1947; 1950) this

76

ability first appears in the Concrete Operational Stage
which starts about age seven. Prior to this the child's
thinking is too egocentric for him or her to take the
role of the other. However, Piaget says that egocen-
trism occurs not just in one period but in each of the
three major periods including the last one which start
about age 11.

What may be happening with the Pathogenesis Index
is that the children in the sample generally are not
really able to take the role of the other. It would thus
seem to have little meaning to label a child in the S to
10 age range pathogenic on the basis of this text since
almost all children would also get the same label.

It should also be noted that all the children told
gory stories. They either reacted to the pictures and
their stories with relish or they displayed no obvious
emotion. The older children seemed to tell the least
gory stories, indicating that they were more aware of
what is considered socially appropriate behavior. This
age trend suggests that if the subjects were older, the
instruments might have distinguished between the control
and the other children. As noted in the methods section,
the reason an older sample was not used was to avoid the

complications of adolescence.

77

Toy Choice as a Measure of Aggression

 

There was no significant abuse effect on choice of
toys. The choice pattern was such that a sex effect,
which was not unexpected, predominated. Males nearly
all chose the most aggressive toys. The girls chose
almost entirely from among the least aggressive toys.
Any abuse effect was thus effectively masked. The sex

effect will be discussed in a later section.

Videotape Measure of Tolerance of Aggression

 

Unexpectedly, the abused group did not differ signi-
ficantly from the control group in latencies on the video-
tape measure. In discussing the abused group's scores
on the physical harm measure, it was suggested that this
group could have been habituated to aggression. In the
present case, one would expect the habituation effect
to shift a child's reaction toward longer latency in re-
porting the observed videotaped aggression. But this was
not found. In fact, the mean time for the abused group
was significantly less than that for the neglected group.
This finding seemingly detracts from the credibility of

the habituation explanation previously advanced for the

78

Blacky findings.

However, there are additional considerations regard-
ing the abused group in thevideotape situation.. The
children were instructed by an adult authority to report
any trouble they viewed. Fear of punishment based on
other experiences with authorities could induce in an
abused child an excessive compliance (as well as inhi-
bition of aggression). It was not possible to predict
whether tolerance for aggression or compliance would be
more likely with the abused group. Thus, the predicted
times for the videotape tests for the abused group were
expected to be bimodally distributed. While this hypo-
thesis was not conclusively supported, it was not dis-
confirmed. In the ANOVA the cluster of times at the low
end may have pulled down the mean of the abused group
and prevented it from being statistically larger than
that of the control group.

Elements of the "bystander effect" may also play a
role in the children's latency of response to the video-
tape (Latane 8 Darley, 1969; Latanee G Rodin, 1969; Levy,
Lundgren, Ansel, Fell 8 McGrath, 1972). The "bystander
effect” is the name given to the phenomenon in which an

individual is less likely to help someone in need if

79

there are any other people around (bystanders) who could
help.

Willingness to get involved enough with other people
was necessary for the child to act. To interrupt the
Experimenter the subject had first to decide that there
was behavior warranting intervention. Such a decision
would be affected by the extent to which a child was
habituated to the degree of violence portrayed. Then
the child had to decide whether he or she was willing
to intervene. Since the Experimenter was in the room dur—
ing the videotape, the child may have viewed the Experi-
menter as imminently about to finish the telephone call
and thus to be capable of monitoring the videotaped
children herself.

The Experimenter's observations suggest that habitua-
tion was not involved. One would expect that an habi-
tuated child would diSplay little or no emotion while
viewing the videotape. The neglected children showed much
emotion, grinning and acting as if they were really en-
joying the videotape. They tended to wait a very long
time before reporting, and some did not report at all.

The earphone volume had deliberately been set high so that
the Experimenter could hear enough to tell what was

happening on the videotape without the children's know-

8O

ledge. It was observed that the grinning children grin-
ned most broadly when the videotape action was the most
aggressive.

The neglected children may be more extreme in their
slowness to report aggression than the abused children
because they have really suffered more deprivation than
the abused children and are more psychologically damaged.
In neglect cases not only is the physical aspect of neg-
lect present, but also there is an emotional and sensory
deprivation aspect that is generally much stronger than
in abuse cases (Rabin, 1963). In many neglect cases the
children almost die from lack of care and while thus
ignored have very little sensory input. They also have
very little chance to influence the way their parents
treat them. Thus they have much less experience in learn-
ing to respond appropriately to societal expectations.

The importance of contact and physical handling in
the socialization process is demonstrated even in experi-
ments with infant monkeys (Harlow, 1962; Harlow G Zimmer-
man, 1959). Social deprivation in infant monkeys led to
severe behavioral problems.

The abused children either grinned like the neglected
children or looked apprehensive. Those who grinned like

the neglected children also tended to take a long time to

81

report. The abused children who looked apprehensive either
reported very early, possibly in an attempt to avoid feared
punishment by being obedient or to stop the videotape which
they found upsetting, or they sat rigidly still to the end
without reporting. Those abused children who reported early
may have learned that they can influence their outcomes
favorably by being obedient and compliant. Abuse frequently
occurs because the child fails to meet some unrealistic pa-
rental expectation. For example, one researcher reported
that a two—year old child was beaten for failing to make her
mother's lunch. By the age of five surviving abused children
often have learned to avoid the abuse by doing what is asked
of them. Thus, some older abused children have more control
over their outcomes than do neglected children, who are neg-
lected no matter what they do. Generally, the children in
the abuse category receive sensory and emotional input even
if it is largely negative; furthermore, in many cases the
abuse is interspersed with protestations of love and/or re-
morse. While all of the abused children in this study had
suffered neglect, those who responded like neglected children
may have experienced more neglect than the rest of the abused
group. Hence, they may not have found compliance effective

in influencing adult response. The Experimenter noted that

82

some of the abusing parents were extremely inconsistent in
their expectations regarding their children's performance;
other had set standards and appeared satisfied when the
child fulfilled their expectations. If future researchers
could distinguish among these apparent subgroups in the
abused population, perhaps more clear-cut findings regard-

ing aggressivity would emerge.

Unpredicted Sex Effects

 

There were three significant sex effects in the cur-
rent study . First, females were higher than males on
the oral erotism scale of the Blacky test, scored for
spontaneous story. This finding suggests that girls are
more oral than boys. Actually several studies of in-
fants and babies report that female babies manifest great-
er oral activity and sensitivity than male babies (Fitz-
gerald, 1976). Female infants display more rhythmical
tongue and mouth movements, more reflexive smiling, and
more thumb sucking. Moss and Robson (1968) found that
mothers use oral pacifiers more with female than male in-

fants, possibly reflecting the relatively greater effec-

83

tiveness of such pacifiers with females.

In the measure of delay of gratification, signifi-
cantly more females in the control group were willing
to wait a week in order to get their most preferred toy.
Possibly these females felt a higher degree of trust for
the Experimenter, who was more similar as a model to
them than to the other children in the study. Willing-
ness to postpone gratification may require more than
just trust in one individual, however. It is possible
to trust an individual and yet believe that unforeseen
circumstances beyond his or her control might prevent
the fulfillment of the promise. It is not surprising
that in general neither males nor females in the abused
and the neglected groups chose to wait a week for their
most preferred toy. For such children the world has
very likely proved to be such a chaotic and unpredic-
table place that they may feel they should take what they
can get now since what will happen later is too uncertain.
What is not such an intuitive result is that the males
of the control group were indistinguishable from the child—
ren of the other groups in this teSt. It seems likely
that girls receive more indoctrination on the virtues of

delaying reward than boys and at an earlier age. And, as

84

already noted, the Experimenter's sex may have had an
effect with this group.

Sex differences in early child rearing may also ac-
count for the toy selection findings. More males picked
the aggressive toys than did females, a finding that is
not surprising since typically aggressiveness in boys
is tolerated if not actually encouraged by many parents
(Maccoby G Jacklin, 1974). Boys are supposed to learn
to defend themselves and to become men who cannot easily
be pushed around. Parents often encourage girls to play
nurturantly with dolls while tolerating more aggressive
play in their sons. Also on television and in movies
there are many more incidents in which aggressive beha-

vior is modelled by males than by females.

Suggestions for Future Research

 

(1) In view of the difficulty in obtaining large sam-
ples in the study of child abuse, it would be desirable
to study the personality variables of abused children on
a broader scale. That is, rather than conduct an experi-
mental study in which one accepts as subjects only those
who fit tightly controlled criteria, one could undertake

a survey sampling, for example, from all children treated

85

for suspected abuse or neglect in a particular area.
Such a broad study would be useful inasmuch as so much
is still unknown regarding the psychological effects of
child abuse.

(2) Since no results with the TAT Aggression or
Pathogenesis Index were significant in the present study
it would be interesting to repeat these tests with abused
and control children of ages extending on up through
adulthood. This would enable one to tell whether these
indices can discriminate between abused and control child-
ren and if so, at what ages.

(3) This study found at least some neglect associated
with all cases of abuse. Since all children were from the
lower socioeconomic class, one must not generalize its
findings to other classes. Since abuse is found in all-
socioeconomic classes, it would be helpful to ascertain
whether neglect also occurs in the middle and upper class-
es. However, in affluent families, one probably needs
to be more sophisticated to detect neglect. In the metro-
politan area of Chicago the only agency dealing with
child abuse in affluent families is the Illinois Depart-
ment of Children and Family Services. Their staff uni-
formly asserts that neglect does not occur in such fami-

lies. However, their measures of neglect involve simple

 

.‘T‘_“l

86

counts of the quantity of food in the refrigerator and
the number of clothes in the child's closet. Such an
inadequate criterion totally fails to get at the possi-
bility that a child may be too young to make use of the
food and clothes present without help. Without some
supervision the child may be existing on a diet too un-
balanced to provide adequate nutrition. Better criteria
are clearly needed. One can hope that some way can be
found that would detect neglect even in more affluent
families. Furthermore, indices of emotional neglect clear-
ly are necessary to enable researchers and practitioners
to identify the impact of such lack of caregiving and to

work toward effective interventions.

 

APPENDICES

 

vllxnfi

APPENDIX A

 

APPENDIX A
PHONE SCRIPT I

I have a problem. I promised my friend, who will
be working with some younger children in that other room
you saw with the toys and the camera, that I would watch
the children for her for a few minutes while she's gone.
See, I can turn on this TV set and watch what's happen-
ing in that room. Oh good! They haven't gotten there

yet.

PHONE SCRIPT 11

Could you watch the children; sort of babysit them
for me while I talk to this man on the phone. Thanks.
Just watch the TV and you can keep an eye on them. You
can even hear them with the ear plug. I think they'll
be OK but sometimes little kids can get into trouble,
and an older person should be watching them. If they
do get in any trouble or anything bad happens you tell

me right away.

88

APPENDIX B

 

 

APPENDIX B

BLACKY INSTRUCTIONS

Instructions to Subject -- Examiner says:

I've got something here which I think you'll find
pretty interesting. It's a bunch of cartoons, like you
see in the funny papers, except that there are no words.
I'm going to show them to you one at a time and the idea
is for you to make up a story about each one«~ tell what
is happening in the picture, why it is happening, and so
on. This is sort of a test of how good your imagination
can be, try to tell as much as possible about how the
characters feel. You can have as long as you like for
each story, and to make it easier to go back over them
later I'll write them down. At the end of each story
I will want to ask you some questions to be sure I got
everything that you had in mind. There are no right or
wrong answers to these questions -- I'm just interested
in what you imagine the answers to be. Before we start,
here are the characters who appear in this comic strip
(show frontispiece for about 20 seconds). Here (point-

ing) is Papa, Mama, Tippy, and the son (daughter), Blacky,

90

 

91

who is the main figure in the cartoons. I'll leave this
over here for you to look at later if you want to (place
frontispiece off to one side for subject to refer to during

the test if he wishes).

INQUIRY ITEMS BLACKY CARTOON 1
MALES AND FEMALES

 

"All right, now for the first cartoon. Here is Blacky -.‘ ——
with Mama..."

1. How does Blacky feel here? Is she

a. Happy.

b. Unhappy.

*c. Not one way of the other.
2. How does Mama feel here? Is she

a. Happy.
b. Unhappy.
*c. Not one way or the other.

3. How much longer will Blacky want to stay there?

*a. Not very long.
b. A long time.

4. Is Blacky
a. Always eating.

b. Always hungry.
*c. Sometimes she's hungry, but often she'd rather play.

92

5. When Blacky grows up will she
a. Always be eating,
*b. Sometimes eat and sometimes do other things.
c. Always be hungry,

6. If Blacky has her way how old will Blacky be when
Mamy stops giving her milk this way?

*a. Not much older,

b. A lot older,
c. Mama wants to stop now.

INQUIRY ITEMS BLACKY CARTOON 2
MALES AND FEMALES

"Here is Blacky with Mama's collar..."

1. Why is Blacky doing that to Mama's collar?
2. How often does Blacky feel like doing that?

*a. Not very often.
b. Often.

3. Blacky does this most often when he wants

a. Attention.
b. Milk.
*c. Fun.

4. What will Blacky do next with Mama's collar?

*a. Get tired and drop it.
b. Give it back to Mama.
c. Angrily chew it up.

 

93

5. What will Mama do when she comes?

a.
b.

Sec.

Feed Blacky.
Send him to bed without dinner.
Bark.

6. If Mama came to feed Blacky would he

a.
*b.
c.

Chew on the collar.
Eat.
Bite Mama.

INQUIRY ITEMS BLACKY CARTOON 6 -- MALES

"Here Blacky is watching Tippy..."

1. How

a.
*b.

does Blacky feel?

Scared?
Not scared?

does Blacky think this is happening?
Tippy was bad.

Somebody is being mean for no reason,
To make Tippy better,

does Blacky feel about his own tail?
Not scared,

Scared,
He thinks he'd look better without a tailr

 

‘.r

_d

4. When will Blacky want his own tail cut off?

3. Soon,
*b- Never.

5. Which one of Blacky's family planned for Tippy's
tail to be cut off?

6. What will the neighbor dogs do when they see Tippy's ..r
tail? .

Be scared.

a
b. Laugh.

*c. Wonder what happened?
d

Think it looks good.

 

INQUIRY ITEMS BLACKY CARTOON 6 -- FEMALES
"Here Blacky is watching Tippy..."

1. How does Blacky feel about her own tail?

3. She knows it's going to be cut off.
b. She wants to keep it.
*c She feels she'd look better if it were cut off.

2. What would upset Blacky most if she Were Tippy?

*a. Nobody loved her enough to Save her tail.
b. Not having a tail.
c. Being bad enough to have her tail cut off

3. Which one of Blacky's family planned for Tippy's
tail to be cut off?

9S

4. What will Tippy think about losing the tail?

a. She'll want it back
*b. She'll be happy

5. What will the neighbor dogs do when they see Tippy's
tail?

a. Be scared

b. Laugh .
*c. Wonder what happened
d. Think it looks good

6. Would Blacky trade her tail for a pretty ribbon?

TABLE 1

PREDICTIONS FOR THE BLACKY PICTURES

Cards Compgrison Prediction
1. Oral Eroticism Abused vs. Neglected A same as or weaker
than N
Abused vs. Controls A stronger than C

Neglected vs. Controls N stronger than C

2. Oral Sadism A vs. N A same as or strong-
er than N

A vs. C A stronger than C
N vs. C N stronger than C
3. Castration
Anxiety A vs. N A stronger than N
A vs. C A stronger than C

N vs. C N stronger than C

 

' ‘31‘...

APPENDIX C

RATER

Ln-AwNN

RATER

Ln-kWMH

0.81
0.80
0.82
0.83

0.91
0.92
0.92
0.92

97

TABLE 1
BLACKY PICTURES

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

BEFORE DISCUSSION

 

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

2 3 4
0.81 0.80 0.82
* 0.87 0.89
0.87 * 0.93
0.89 0.93 *
0 84 0.92 0 94

AFTER DISCUSSION

 

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

2 3 4
0.91 0.92 0.92

* 0.95 0.97
0.95 * 0.98
0.97 0.98 *

0.97 0.98 1.00

0.83
0.84
0.93
0.94

0.92
0.97
0.98
1.00

98

TABLE 2

PATHOGENESIS INTER-RATER CORRELATION

BEFORE DISCUSSION

 

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

RATER - 1 2 3 4 5
l * 0.78 0.95 0.70 0.66
2 0.78 * 0.78 0.80 0.67
3 0.95 0.78 * 0.75 0.66
4 0.79 0.80 0.75 * 0.71
5 0.66 0.67 0.66 0.71 *

AFTER DISCUSSION

 

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

RATER 1 2 3 4 5
1 * 0.92 0.98 0.95 0.87
2 0.92 * 0.90 0.94 0.88
3 0.98 0.90 * 0.93 0.84
4 0.94 0.94 0.93 * 0.84
5 0.87 0.88 0.84 0.86 *

99

TABLE 3

PATHOGENESIS CARD-BY-CARD ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

 

 

§§_within

conditions

28

61.08

Source d§_ N§_ :5

Card 2-P
Sex (A) 1 8.20 1.25
Abuse (B) 2 12.43 2.39
AB 2 0.30 0.06
§§_within conditions 28 145.51

Card 2-B
Sex (A) 1 1 .71 2.44
Abuse (B) 2 1.12 1.60
AB 2 1.12 1.60
§§jwithin conditions 28 19.63

Card 4-P
Sex (A) 1 11.49 2.00
Abuse (B) 2 3.75 0.65
AB 2 4.71 0.82
§§_within conditions 28 160.21

Card 4-B
Sex (A) 1 8.47 1.84
Abuse (B) 2 3.98 0.86
AB 2 3.89 0.84
SS within conditions 28 129.21

Card 6—P
Sex (A) 1 0.62 0.27
Abuse (B) 2 1.33 0.57
AB 2 6.21 2.69
§§_within conditions 28 64.68

Card 6-B
Sex (A) 1 1.37 0.63
Abuse (B) 2 .66 0.30
AB 2 4.55 2.09

100

 

TABLE 3
(Continued)

Source d§_ M§_ ‘5

Card 7-P
Sex (A) 1 10.64 2.52
Abuse (8) 2 11.15 2.64
AB 2 14.46 3.42*
SS within conditions 28 118.21

Card 7—B
Sex (A) 1 2.62 0.64
Abuse (B) 2 3.90 0.95
AB 2 0.82 0.20
§§_within conditions 28 114.90

Card 9-P
Sex (A) 1 7.10 1.21
Abuse (B) 2 7.58 1.30
A8 2 1.02 0.17
§§_within conditions 28 163.63

Card 9-B
Sex (A) 1 0.47 0.09
Abuse (B) 2 0.70 0.14
AB 2 1.78 0.35
§§_within conditions 28 141.13

Card 12-P
Sex (A) 1 0.32 0.07
Abuse (B) 2 22.99 4.97**
AB 2 0.95 0.21
§§_within conditions 28 129.51

Card 12-B
Sex (A) 1 3.37 0.93
Abuse (B) 2 10.80 3.01
AB 2 5.01 1.40
§§_within conditions 28 100.33

 

*Significant at P < .05
**Significant at P <:.025

 

 

101

 

TABLE 3
(Continued)

Source g£_ MS. .5

Card 18BM-P
Sex (A) 1 0.53 0.16
Abuse (B) 2 0.84 0.26
AB 2 5.16 1.56
§§_within conditions 28 92.51

Card ILBM-B
Sex (A) 1 1.32 0.61
Abuse (B) 2 0.03 0.02
AB 2 2.83 1.30
§§_within conditions 28 60.80

Card 18GF-P
Sex (A) 1 0.00 0.00
Abuse (B) 2 7.74 1.65
AB 2 4.69 1.00
§§_within conditions 28 130.80

Card l8GF-B
Sex (A) 1 0.00 0.00
Abuse (B) 2 4.23 0.92
AB 2 1.81 0.40
§§_within conditions 28 128.33

102

TABLE 4
TAT AGGRESSION INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS
BEFORE DISCUSSION

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

RATER 1 2 . 3 4
1 * 0.86 0.88 0.84
2 0.86 * 0.86 0.82
3 0.88 0.86 * 0.86
4 0.84 0.82 0.86 *

AFTER DISCUSSION

INTER-RATER CORRELATIONS

RATER 1 2 3 4
1 * 0.99 0.99 0.99
2 0.99 * 0.99 0.99
3 0.99 0.99 * 0.99
4 0.99 0.99 0.99 *

103

TABLE 5

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF TAT AGGRESSION SCORES

 

Source _d£' _M§_ _J:

A11 Cards-score on each card sum-
med over-raters
Sex (A) 1 31.66 1.68
Abuse (B) 2 13.53 0.72
AB 2 16.23 0.86
§§_within conditions 266 5003.20

Card 2
Sex (A) 1 25.33 1.99
Abuse (B) 2 17.34 1.36
AB ‘ 2 4.12 0.32
§§_within conditions 28 12.72

Card 4
Sex (A) 1 0.10 0.01
Abuse (B) 2 0.73 0.06
AB 2 8:08 0.67
§§_within conditions 28 12.13

Card 6
Sex (A) 1 0.01 0.00
Abuse (B) 2 15.08 1.32
AB 2 4.81 0.42
§§_within conditions 28 11.35

Card 7
Sex (A) 1 20.95 1.13
Abuse (B) 2 39.98 2.15
AB 2 0.19 0.01
SS within conditions 28 18.63

104

 

TABLE 5
(Continued)

Source d; MS. F_

Card 9
Sex (A) 1 5.96 0.47
Abuse (B) 2 47.97 3.78*
AB 2 0.76 0.06
§§_within conditions 28 12.70

Card 12
Sex (A) 1 2.75 0.17
Abuse (B) 2 12.17 0.74
AB 2 10.47 0.64
§§_within conditions 28 457.73

Card 18 BM
Sex (A) 1 0.07 0.01
Abuse (B) 2 11.46 0.96
AB 2 4.75 0.40
SS within conditions 28 333.15

Card 18 GF
Sex (A) 1 7.01 0.38
Abuse (B) 2 43.61 2.38
AB 2 12.42 0.68
§§_within conditions 28 513.33

*P (.05

105

TABLE 6
CHI-SQUARE ANALYSES OF BLACKY CARD 2
ORAL SADISM

SICK VS. NORMAL RESPONSES

 

 

Inquiry Question 2 -- Summing over sex*1
Response a : normal
Response b : sick
Chi-square = 5.942
df = 2
Critical value (a = .05) = 5.99

Inquiry Question 4 -- Summing over sex*
Response a,b : normal
Response c : sick
Chi-square = 1.146
df = 2
Critical value ( O(= .05) = 5.99

 

*Note: The distribution of responses was such that to have
analysed each sex separately would have required having
fewer than 5 subjects in half of the cells even if one
lumped abuse and neglect together.

APPENDIX D

107

APPENDIX D

AGES OF SUBJECTS

 

 

 

MALE FEMALE
6 Years 6 Months 5 Years 5 Months
Abuse 6 " 6 " 6 " 0 "
8 N l U 7 H 4 fl
8 n 9 u 7 u l l n
9 H 8 M 8 ll 6 H
5 H 4 n 5 n l l M
6 fl 8 H 8 H l H
Neglect 8 " 2 " 8 " 5 "
9 H 4 H 9 H 8 H
1 0 fl 1 l H l 0 H 4 H
6 M 6 u 7 H 7 H
6 " 10 " 7 " 11 "
7 n 2 H 8 u l 0 "
Control 7 " 4 " 9 " 2 "
8 N 6 n 9 U 9 M
9 H 0 H
9 M l 0 fl
9 H l 0 H

 

 

 

 

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Bandura, A.

REFERENCE NOTES

Personal communication.

117

July, 1975.

. £149.:

 

 

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