Abstract
The study examined certain aspects of the validity of the Inter personal Maturity Level Classification, which has been used in treating delinquents in the California Youth Authority. Specifi cally, the roles of intelligence and affect awareness in the classifi cation system were studied. Groups of institutionalized deliquent girls at different levels of "interpersonal maturity" were compared on several measures of intelligencre and degree of awareness of feelings in others. The results indicated that intelligence, verbal fluency, and race were the most important components of Inter personal Maturity Level considered. Higher levels of maturity were also accompanied by greater attention to affect cues and better judgment of nonverbal expressions of affect. The findings concerning affect awareness, while consistent with the theory behind the classification system, point to differential salience of affect as the key variable underlying differences in awareness of feelings in others. The data on intelligence point to the need for further research to clarify the actual components of the Inter personal Maturity Level Classification.
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