Psychological Basis of the Relationship Between the Rorschach Texture Response and Adult Attachment: The Mediational Role of the Accessibility of Tactile Knowledge

ABSTRACT

This study clarifies the psychological basis for the linkage between adult attachment and the texture response on the Rorschach by examining the mediational role of the accessibility of tactile knowledge. Japanese undergraduate students (n = 35) completed the Rorschach Inkblot Method, the Experiences in Close Relationship Scale for General Objects (Nakao & Kato, 2004) and a lexical decision task designed to measure the accessibility of tactile knowledge. A mediation analysis revealed that the accessibility of tactile knowledge partially mediates the association between attachment anxiety and the texture response. These results suggest that our hypothetical model focusing on the response process provides a possible explanation of the relationship between the texture response and adult attachment.

Acknowledgments

Portions of this article were originally presented at the 19th International Congress of Rorschach and Projective Methods in Leuven, Belgium. We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments received from Shinobu Ikoma, Masao Tsuchiya, Yoshiyuki Oshima, and Satoshi Mochizuki.

Notes

¹ We cannot observe the cognitive process directly via the Rorschach task; however, the coding criteria of the response determinants correspond well to the nature of visual cognition. Therefore, what we extract from the coding of the response determinant is merely an assumption about the cognitive process underlying the verbal response.

² For preventing unintentional priming effects, practice stimuli consisted of abstract concepts that were incapable of being touched, such as honesty and resemblance, among others.

³ Too fast or too long RTs might reflect failures of pushing a button, so we excluded them to control for the influence of behavioral errors.

⁴ r_s = Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.