Adaptive regulation of visual after-effect duration and social-emotional adjustment

The spiral aftereffect technique (SAT) can differentiate between depressive and somatoform disorder patients

This study examined how differences in visuo-perceptual patterns are related to psychopathology. Fifty-six patients (37 women, 19 men; M age = 43.8 yr., SD = 13.4) with a main diagnosis of unipolar depression and 42 patients (22 women, 20 men; M age = 42.0 yr., SD = 11.1) with a main diagnosis of somatoform disorder were compared. The duration and trend of a visual motion aftereffect were measured with the Spiral Aftereffect Technique (SAT). The results indicated that successively increasing aftereffect durations characterized the depressive patients, whereas patterns of very short or short final aftereffect preceded by successively decreasing aftereffect durations characterized the patients with a somatoform disorder. The SAT is thus a valuable tool for linking objectively measured perceptual-personality characteristics with some mental disorders.

Relation of mobility-fixity to the interpretation of pictorial stimuli

A group of 61 students who had previously (in 1986) been classified by Hansson, Rydén, and Johnsson in terms of perceptual fixity-mobility using a "free" Rod-and-Frame Test, were investigated regarding their interpretations of a nonfigurative stimulus shown repetitively at short exposure-times, and their characterization of two pictures each portraying two soldiers in intensive interaction--one man apparently attacking the other in the first picture and apparently rescuing or taking care of the other man in the second. Mobile subjects on the free Rod-and-Frame Test reported a larger number of different interpretations of the nonfigurative stimulus and construed it more frequently in terms of human themes than did the fixed subjects; in rating the pictures of soldiers, they used more extreme and complex characteristics. It appeared that, when confronted with ambiguous stimuli, the mobile individual moves both "horizontally", as it were, along the surface of objective reality, and "vertically", from present to past realities, thus conjoining subjective-emotional and objective-analytic aspects of perception. This interpretation agrees with Werner's model of mobility-fixity which implies that the mobile individual operates on different developmental levels of perceptual functioning.

Relationship between differentiation and integration of self and nonself: an investigation in terms of modes of perceptual adaptation

Differentiation and integration of self- and nonself-aspects of perception were investigated as features of the process of adapting to a spiral aftereffect (SAE) induced with massed trials. The cessation of the SAE at each trial was assumed to indicate that self-aspects of perception had been differentiated from nonself-aspects, changes in SAE duration over trials being considered to represent the integration of these aspects. Degree and stability of self-nonself-differentiation, reflected in the level and persistence of field-dependence measured on a serial version of the Rod and Frame Test, varied between individuals (N = 129). The results suggest that persistent field-independence requires both self- and nonself-aspects of perception to be adequately and continuously represented in an integrative process which is oriented towards stimulus-proximity, self-aspects of perception being successively replaced by nonself-aspects.

Relation between spiral aftereffect duration and rod-and-frame test performance in early childhood

A group of 38 preschool children, aged 63 to 82 mo., were divided into subgroups of short, long and intermediate spiral aftereffect duration. The group with an intermediate score was assumed to have reached a stage of relative autonomy from both extraceptive (nonself) and intraceptive (self) factors of perception. As predicted, this group was neither as dependent on the visual field in the Rod-and-frame Test as the other two groups, nor did it score as extremely independent of that field.

Influence of physiognomic stimulus properties on afterimage adaptation

The study compares results from a process-oriented afterimage experiment in 3 groups of 24 psychiatric patients each. The fixation stimuli were a blank oval, a sad and a happy face—one for each group. Results show that the sad stimulus produces mote distinct adaptive patterns in a sequence of repeated measurements than do the other stimuli.

Individual consistencies in adaptation to negative afterimages and spiral aftereffects

The study compares results from two experiments performed with 38 Ss, one experiment on the duration of spiral aftereffects (SAE), the other on the size, brightness and color of projected negative afterimages (AI). In both experiments stimulus presentations were repeated until the series of data thus obtained were reasonably stabilized at a “final level.” SAE correlated with AI as regards both this final level and the progression of change preceding it if in the latter experiment size and brightness data were combined. AI color was also related to SAE duration.