The Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) in Child Custody Evaluations

Abstract

Although the Rorschach is widely used in child custody evaluations, its contributions are often underestimated. As an evidence-supported, performance-based method, it adds incremental validity to self-report findings. It yields insights about perceptual and coping styles, reality testing and logical thinking, emotional regulation and sensitivity, and relational schemas. Some evaluators hesitate to use the Rorschach due to concerns about reliability and validity, admissibility, and courtroom presentation. R-PAS, a relatively new Rorschach system, shows particular promise in addressing such concerns. It selects and organizes variables according to their degree of empirical support and clinical meaningfulness, uses internationally relevant, nonpathologizing reference data, uses contemporary psychometric statistical methods, and presents results in a format that is easy for a court to understand.

KEYWORDS:

• child custody
• assessment/evaluation
• expert witness testimony
• theoretical issues
• Rorschach

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PASTM) manual and website (www.r-pas.org) are owned by Rorschach Performance Assessment System, LLC, a corporation in which both authors have a financial interest.

Notes

The term, “projective test,” with its misleading and pejorative connotations, has been replaced in favor of designations for these tests as “performance” or “performance-based” tests of personality (Meyer & Kurtz, 2006).

In an intriguing recent development, mirror neurons, which neuroscience research has implicated in empathy and theory of mind, have been shown to be implicated in the formation of Human Movement responses on the Rorschach (Giromini, Porcelli, Viglione, Parolin, & Pineda, 2010; Pineda, Porcelli, Parolin, & Viglione, 2011; Porcelli, Giromini, Parolin, Pineda, & Viglione, 2013.

For narrative summaries of validity of individual variables see Bornstein and Masling (2005), Exner and Erdberg (2005), and Viglione (1999).

Although Frequency of Organizational Activity (Zf) validly measures sophistication and effort in processing, it was omitted based on considerations of parsimony and lack of incremental validity over other R-PAS variables, especially the variable Complexity (Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, & Erdberg, 2011).

This should not necessarily be an unexpected finding. People who are honest with themselves may be able to respond with reasonable accuracy to questions about their degree of intelligence, level of artistic talent, or degree of attractiveness to the opposite sex, but we know that such reports are by no means so highly correlated with the results from I.Q. tests or independent expert judgments as to be used interchangeably with them (Mabe & West, 1982). In the absence of “gold standard” criteria, self-report and performance-based tests often stand on a roughly equal footing, with each reflecting valid representations of different aspects of the same construct (Bornstein, 2002).

For more detailed discussions of the applicability of the Frye v. United States (1923) and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) standards to the Rorschach, see Erard (2012); Erard, Meyer, and Viglione (2014); McCann and Evans (2008); and Ritzler, Erard, and Pettigrew (2002a, 2002b); but see Grove and Barden (1999) and Grove, Barden, Garb, and Lilienfeld (2002).

This is the behavioral representational or response process point of view.

R-Optimization is particularly helpful in forensic contexts, such as child custody, where defensive responding may lead to litigants producing brief and uninformative records.

Currently available non-patient data for children and adolescents are less coherent and more incomplete than those for adults (Meyer, Erdberg, & Shaffer, 2007; Hamel, Shaffer, & Erdberg, 2000). Accordingly, R-PAS interpretation of non-adult records considers only those variables for which adequate data are available and takes a very conservative approach before considering child and adolescent scores pathological (Rorschach Performance Assessment System, 2012). Examiners around the world are being trained and certified to collect new R-PAS normative data for both adults and children.

For more detailed discussions of admissibility issues surrounding R-PAS in particular, see Erard, 2012, and Erard, Meyer, and Viglione, 2014; but see Gurley, Piechowski, Sheehan, and Gray, 2014, and Kvisto, Gacono, and Medoff, 2013.