{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020366598778004074, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005295315682281059, 'mean_word_length': 5.233502538071066, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 1, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Level of Experiencing as a Predictor of Short-Term Play Therapy Outcome

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. Twenty-four boys between the ages of 8 and 12 participated in 12 one-hour, individual play therapy sessions. These subjects had been referred to a child guidance center for problems other than brain damage, mental retardation, or psychosis. An attempt was made to predict therapeutic outcome using pretherapy measures of level of experiencing and level of adjustment. Level of experiencing was assessed by scoring the subjects' responses on the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank test according to a modification of criteria provided by Dorfmann (1955). Level of adjustment was assessed by scoring the subjects' responses on the !SB according to a modification of criteria provided by Rotter (1954). Pretherapy adjustment was also assessed by means of parental reports on the severity of the children's problems (Target Complaints) and through parents' ratings of their children's characteristics (Semantic Differential). Outcome was assessed by measuring pretherapy and post-therapy differences on the !SB (Rotter scoring) and the Semantic Differential. It was hypothesized that level of experiencing was predictive of successful outcome in short-term individual play therapy with children. This hypothesis was not supported since none of the statistical tests which were performed achieved the necessary significance levels. The ' poor predictive validity of level of experiencing was due in part to a confound with the age of the child. Hence it was pointed out that any future use of the !SB to assess level of experiencing would have to make use of developmental norms. It was also hypothesized that level of experiencing would be more predictive of outcome than level of adjustment. An obvious corollary to this hypothesis was that level of experiencing was not synonymous with severity of pathology. This hypothesis did receive partial support since level of experiencing came the clo~est to achieving significance of any of the predictors. The corollary hypothesis was supported as indicated by the non-significant correlations between level of experiencing and predictors based on severity of pathology.