What is the state of the art in computerised coding of Thematic Apperception Tests (TATs)? Thematic Apperception Tests (TATs) involve showing test takers pictures and getting them to write stories based on the pictures. Coding such stories for themes and traits can be complex, time-consuming, and potentially suffer from issues of unreliability. Thus, it would be interesting to see whether automated computerised coding could make the process of scoring TATs more efficient, reliable, and valid.


What is the current state of computerised coding of TATs?
How does the reliability and validity of computerised coding compare to human coding?
The state of the art in computer-scored Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT) as of 2015 appears to be that computer-scored TATs do not exist. 

There does not appear to be any relevant results on Google Scholar, Web of Science or Scopus for any search I can think of including the term "thematic apperception" which yield any example or mention of computer-scored TATs, and all recent studies utilizing TATs have reported using standard versions (e.g., Turk et al., 2010). A 2013 book dedicated to the TAT, A practical guide to the Thematic Apperception Test: The TAT in clinical practice also fails to make any mention of computer-scored or otherwise computerized implementations of the TAT.

References


Aronow, E., Weiss, K. A., &amp; Reznikoff, M. (2013). A practical guide to the Thematic Apperception Test: The TAT in clinical practice. Routledge.
Turk, A. A., Brown, W. S., Symington, M., &amp; Paul, L. K. (2010). Social narratives in agenesis of the corpus callosum: linguistic analysis of the Thematic Apperception Test. Neuropsychologia, 48(1), 43-50.