In the past several years we have been engaged in developing methods of systematically and objectively scoring small samples of speech obtained in a standardized fashion (Gleser, Gottschalk, and John, 1959; Gottschalk, Gleser, Daniels, and Block, 1958; Gottschalk, Gleser, Magliocco, and D'Zmura, 1961; Gottschalk, Gleser, Springer, Kaplan, Shanon, and Ross, 1960; Gottschalk, Springer, and Gleser, 1961). One important purpose for focusing our attention on verbal behavior has been to develop objective measures of an individual's emotional level or psychological state at any particular time. Such measures would be of great value, for example, in assessing changes in level and lability of emotional response in reaction to psychoactive drugs or psychotherapy, and in determining the relationship of psychological to physiological or biochemical responses in an individual.
There are relatively few objective measures of immediate emotional state. Most psychological tests have been