Objective measurement of reality-contact weakness

The purpose of this study is to examine experimentally the view that maladjustment involves a degree of difference between what the maladjusted individual sees as real and what his society sees as real. The investigation of this viewpoint has entailed the construction of instruments for measuring perceptual deviations from objective or social reality and an examination of the inner consistency and predictive value of these instruments. The split-half reliability after correction by the Spearman-Brown formula was sufficiently high to justify use of all scores, except the Closure Score of the Action Picture Test, for group comparison. The Closure Score was therefore omitted from all further analysis. The reliability coefficients of the remaining tests varied from .64 to .94 in the normal-neurotic group, and from .71 to .93 in both groups combined (normal-neurotic plus psychotic). With respect to the freedom of the tests from irrelevant factors, data were insufficient to give a clear-cut answer. It was shown, however, that the Digit Test measured something in addition to memory span for digits, and that the Information Test measured something in addition to the actual amount of information known. An irrelevant variable that appeared to influence the score on the Information Test was the factor of reading comprehension. Significant differences between the mean of the normal-neurotic group and the mean of the psychotic group were obtained in all scores except the Closure Score. The critical ratios of these significant differences varied from 2.16 to 10.48. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)