PROBLEM Witkin@) showed that passivity, inability to function independently of environmental support, readiness to yield to authority, a high anxiety level, low selfesteem, and fear of sexual and aggressive impulses, are associated with fielddependent perceptual performance, while high self-esteem and the ability to deal with anxiety and sexual and aggressive impulses are associated with field-independent perceptual performances. Witkin then determined that in the field-independent, pathology tends to take such forms as over-control, over-intellectualization, and isolation from reality, and in the field-dependent, personality disturbance takes the form of a primitive chaotic personality structure or the form of alcoholism.It appears, therefore, that a person's characteristic field-dependence or fieldindependence represents a deep-rooted feature of his psychological make-up, and should influence his scores on a structured personality test. It was hypothesized that the higher the level of field-dependence, the more would be the utilization of environment, and this would be demonstrated by elevation of the T scores obtained on the PA scale of the MMPI. Conversely, the greater the field-independence, the more would be the utilization of inner sensations and bodily processes as indicated by an elevation of T scores obtained on the HY and Hs scales of the MMPI. This study investigated whether the amount of field-dependence was correlated with the elevation of specific scales on the MMPI.
In a size-constancy task 10 schizophrenic and 10 normal adolescent males judged variable triangles as smaller, same size, or larger than a standard. The schizophrenics' judgments were further from constancy, and differed qualitatively. They made more (a) same-size judgments, (b) changes of judgments, (c) overestimation of the size of the standard, and (d) improvement with practice. The relative constancy of the same-size judgments of most Ss suggested the effects of personality variables. A significant correlation was found between constancy performance and the Sc score on the MMPI for the experimental group. The direction of error, underconstancy or overconstancy, was determined by the space arrangement of the variable and the standard. Both groups responded similarly to the experimental conditions of distance, series order, and space arrangement.
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