[Story stem evaluation in clinical practice with young children].

In the field of developmental research, there is a long tradition of using story completion tasks with play figures for preschoool children. In contrast, story completion tasks are not often used in the clinical assessments of young children. In this paper we will present the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB), a typical story completion task, which is useful in clinical as well as in research settings. We will give two clinical case examples in order to demonstrate how compelling this method is for young children because they can continue the stories with the help of play figures. In this way the instrument can help to open a window into the inner world of young children.