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. Quasi-F analyses revealed that these results were related significantly to the anxiety factor common to both depressed-anxious and anxious Ss. Implications of these results for future research on anxiety and depression were discussed.

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. However, left-right placement did vary significantly as a function of handedness but not eye-dominance. Although all subjects tended to place their drawings left-of-center, right-handed subjects were significantly more extreme in their placement than were left-handed subjects.

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. It can be shown analytically, however, that for a spherical test surfaces having an N.A. less, similar0.8, the error introduced by moving the test surface axially, rather than radially, can be made

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. Expressions are given for the maximum scanner velocity and the minimum elapsed time for the scan as a function of the acceptable variance.

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. The differential processing was not found to be associated with the variation of stimuli on the verbal-nonverbal dimension.

The elimination of building vibration in an optical laboratory.

The elimination of vibration is a straightforward engineering job that is analogous to the design of an electrical filter. The building vibration, which was so intense that no serious interferometry was possible, was measured using a commercial vibration meter. A simple, single-mesh mechanical filter was designed to remove the existing frequencies of vibration. The filter was constructed and its performance measured. As a practical test of the performance of the vibration elimination, a hologram was made on the vibration isolated granite slab.