No rationale is provided although examination of the choice indicates satisfaction of physical needs, relief from irritation, or rudimentary comprehension of happy or sad states applied to self or other. The individual is equipped with a number of primary dispositional tendencies for behavior. These tendencies include the propensity for pleasure, freedom from pain, imitative learning, and general incorporation of the behaviors and evaluations of significant others. Unelaborated Need Oriented Response. In an unpublished study of the ego development of impoverished black preschool children in the rural South, the author designed a series of cards which depicted contrasting choices which sampled material, social, and body preferences.
Child indicates happy man face.
Beta One B. Phenomenal Associative. The subject's rationale consists of associated thoughts with their idiosyncratic elements. He appears to lack a socialized framework for commonly accepted causal and functional relations. As the examples below suggest, the associations which the child constructs are idiosyncratic and are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the child's aim. The subject responds with functional reasons which bear only an accidental relation to preference.