Disturbed children's attitudes toward parents and peers as revealed by sentence completions

A sample of child guidance patients was compared with a sample of school children previously studied by Harris and Tseng (1957) with regard to attitudes toward parents and peers as revealed in responses to a sentence completion test. The clinic children could not be differentiated by any single response trend. Instead, their reactions (and their differences from the normal children) depended upon their age, their sex, and the particular person toward whom they were reacting. They were, for example, almost as overwhelmingly positive in their attitudes toward the mother as were the normal children. They were considerably less positive toward like-sex peers; and, during adolescence only, were exaggeratedly positive toward peers of the opposite sex. Attitudes toward parent figures were also evaluated in relationship to factors such as parental presence and parental attitude.