Children Apperception
Test
Introduction
• Children’s Apperception Test (CAT) CAT is a projective method or apperceptive
method which helps in investigating personality by studying the dynamic meaningfulness
of the individual differences in perception of standard stimuli. Apperception means definite
recognition.
• The original idea of CAT was produced by Dr. Ernst Kris. Kris pointed out how we could
expect children to identify themselves much more readily with animals than with persons.
Thus, children can easily project to animals. The pictures on the CAT often address the
manner in which individuals interact with their environment in terms of need fulfillment.
Age: The CAT is typically administered to children aged three
to ten years, though it can be used for cognitively lower-
functioning children up to age eleven.
Purpose
• The CAT is used to assess personality, level of maturity, and often psychological health of a
child.
• The theory is that a child’s responses to a series of DRAWINGS of animals or humans in
familiar situations are likely to revealed significant aspects of a child’s personality.
• Some of these dimensions of personality include level of reality testing and judgement control
and regulation of drives, defenses, conflicts, and level of autonomy.
Description
• The original CAT featured 10 pictures of animals in such human social contexts as playing
games or sleepin in a bed.
• Today, this version is known as the CAT or the CAT-A (for animal).
• Animals are chosen for the pictures because it was believed that young relate better to
animals than humans. Each picture is presented by a test administrator in a form of a card.
• The pictures are meant to encourage the children to tell stories related to competition, illness,
injuries, body image, family life and school situations.
Administration
The CAT which takes 20-45 minutes to administer, is conducted by a trained or
professional - psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, teacher or especially
trained pediatrician, in a clinical, research, or educational setting.
After carefully establishing rapport with the child, the examiner shows the child
one card after another in a particular sequence (although fewer than ten cards
may be used at the examiner’s discretion) and encourages the child to tell a story
with a beginning, middle and end about the characters.
The examiner may ask the child to describe, for example, what led up to the scene
depicted, the emotions of the characters, and what might happen in the future.
Cont.
The CAT test manual suggests that the administrator should consider the
following variables when analyzing a child’s story about a particular card :
• The protagonist (main character) of the story.
• The primary needs of the protagonist;
• The relationship of the main character to his or her personal environment.
Scoring
• In a projective test such as CAT, there is no right or wrong answer.
• NO numerical score or scale for the test
• The test administrator records the essences of each of the stories told and indicates
the presences or absences of certain thematic elements on the form provided.
• As in the TAT, each story is carefully analyzed to uncover the child’s underlying needs,
conflicts, emotions, attitudes, and response patters.
• The CAT’s creators suggest a series of ten variables to consider when interpreting the
results. These variables include the story’s majors themes, the major character's
needs, drives, anxieties, conflicts, fears, and the child’s conception of the external
world.
Uses
• The CAT is designed for use in clinical, educational and research settings.
• To discover the child’s structure of personality, his dynamic mode of reacting to
his problems and the manner he would handle his problem of development.
• The pictures also draw out a child’s anxieties, fears and psychological defenses.
• The child’s structure and his dynamic method of reacting to and handling the
problem of growth.
