Psychological Distance in Disturbed and Normal Children

Abstract

In an attempt to determine whether emotionally disturbed children experience more distant psychological relationships than normal children a modified version of Kuethe's social schemata technique was administered to 20 children referred to a treatment center and to 26 control group youngsters. The figures to be replaced on a field consisted of eight social stimuli and four non-social designs presented in 12 different combinations of pairs. No significant systematic directional differences in replacement distances for emotionally disturbed as compared with normal children were found. There were, however, significant age and stimulus effects. Moreover, the patient group exhibited less over-all accuracy in distance judgments than the non-disturbed children.