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response to the task. Examples from the WAIS(What direction would you go if you were going from Chicago to Panama?) If you went by airplane, I imagine you would go south. (Similarity between north-west) They're both opposite south and east. (How far is it from New York to Paris?) Oh, I don't know. Eighthour flight. Examples from the Rorschach • (VIII) . . . an insect that's grown huge—oversized. (Okay, what made it look like an overgrown insect7) I could see the outline of an insect, but it was too big to be a normal insect so it had to be overgrown. (VII) Some kind of fancy military jet flying up the card. d. Overspecificity. The overspecific response is similar to the excessively qualified response in that an obsessive disposition has become exaggerated in both cases. However, in an overspecific response, the scorer should look for arbitrary, irrelevant specifications that spoil a response and give it an ovendeational quality. The subject is attempting to be precise, but fails because of excessive obsessionality or compulsivity, and thus tends toward absurdity or bizarreness. Examples from the WAIS: (What is the theme of the book of Genesis?) It's, uh a fairy tale . . . tryin' to describe to the . . . proletariat masses how . . . life began . . . for human beings. (What is similar about a coat and a dress?) They both hang . . . an' they're opening at the bottom, mmm . . . they could have buttons, both of them, or zippers. An' they're both worn as clothing. Examples from the Rorschach: (III) A four-legged lamb. (Ill) A bone of a bear. e. Syncretistic Response. Erring in the opposite direction of Overspecificity, the subject is here too general and abstract, instead of restricting a conceptual class, s/he includes too much in it. The Syncretistic Response is seen most often on items in the Similarities subtest of the WAIS. Examples from the WAIS: (What is similar about a fly-tree?) They both live in the air. (What is similar about an orangebanana?) They both contain atoms. 2. Flippant Response A Flippant Response also reflects a problem with distance in that the subject adopts a stance toward the testing situation that betrays an absence of seriousness or a tendency to dismiss the test-taking with wisecracks. Flippant Responses are often humorous, and may be very engaging in informal conversation; however, when such remarks are disruptive and inappropriate to the testing situation, they are scored. A difficulty that arises in scoring these responses is that their inappropriateness is due to the situation in which they occur, instead of to the malignancy of the response itself. Whereas there might be no indication of slippage when one makes a flippant response in ordinary conversation, it becomes a problem if one fails to inhibit these responses in the testing