The responsiveness of kindergarten children to the behavior of their school companions was studied by means of a pictorial guess-who method, supplemented by individual interviews with the children, home reports, and information provided by the teachers. The pictures used each illustrate particular behavior or personality traits. The method is a modification of the thematic apperception approach suitable to kindergarten age. It reveals responsiveness to some aspects of behavior that the child could not verbalize otherwise.
The degree and quality of a child's social responsiveness is demonstrated to have little or no relationship to age within the group range, intelligence, skill in interpreting pictures, sex, or length of time he has been in the kindergarten. Only a slight relationship of social responsiveness to the child's personality make-up was indicated, the more striking observation being that aggressive, trouble-making, and nonconforming children showed little social responsiveness except to the behavior of their two