Effects of anxiety and depression on anagram performance, ratings of cognitive interference, and the negative subjective evaluation of performance.

Studied whether any differential effects of anxiety and depression could be discerned in the anagram performance, ratings of cognitive interference, and subjective evaluation of anagram performance displayed by college students. Seventy-two undergraduates (36 male, 36 female) were selected to participate in the present experiment on the basis of their scores on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (A-Trait) and/or the Beck Depression Inventory. Results showed that depressed-anxious and anxious Ss displayed a tendency toward reduced efficiency in anagram solution, rated themselves as having experienced significantly more cognitive interference during the anagram task, and displayed a significantly more negative subjective evaluation of their anagram performance than did control Ss.

Handedness as a determinant of left-right placement in human figure drawings.

Assessed the effects of handedness and eye-dominance on the right-left placement of human figure drawings. Previous studies had reported that right-left placement varied as a function of personality. However, the present findings indicate no significant relationship between the two personality variables in the Thorndike Dimension of Temperament Scale and drawing placement.

Direct measurement of phase in a spherical-wave Fizeau interferometer.

When measuring the contours of spherical surfaces by direct phase measurement the Twyman-Green interferometer is usually chosen in preference to the Fizeau interferometer. In the Twyman-Green interferometer the phase reference is provided by moving a plane mirror in a direction normal to its surface. In the spherical-wave Fizeau interferometer the reflecting surfaces are spherical and, at the same instant at least, cannot be moved in a direction normal to the surfaces at all points over the optical aperture.

Noise in MTF Measurements.

The effect of shot noise on the MTF of a lens when measured by means of an edge scan is treated both analytically and experimentally. It is shown that the variance in the MTF, introduced by the shot noise, establishes an upper bound on the magnitude of any systematic error introduced into the MTF measurement by the noise. Both the variance and the systematic bias in the MTF measurement due to the noise can be reduced to arbitrarily small values by controlling the electrical bandwidth and the scanner velocity.

The concreteness of attributes in concept learning strategies.

Ss were presented with conjunctive concept learning tasks using geometric stimuh in two experiments and using combinations of abstract characteristics in two other experiments. Evidence indicated that the conjunctive hypotheses for geometric stimuli were not mediated by component values but were sampled as unitized wholes. In contrast, conjunctive hypotheses for abstract attributes were sampled via independent combinations of component values.