EFFECTS OF SENSORY AND PERCEPTUAL DEPRIVATION ON A BATTERY OF OPEN-ENDED COGNITIVE TASKS.

2 EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED WITH 43 MALE COLLEGE SS TO TEST THE HYPOTHESIS THAT PERFORMANCE ON OPEN-ENDED COGNITIVE TESTS WILL BE IMPAIRED BY EXPOSURE TO AN IMPOVERISHED SENSORY ENVIRONMENT. THE GUILFORD BATTERY OF CREATIVE THINKING (10 TESTS) WAS ADMINISTERED BEFORE AND AFTER 3 DAYS OF EITHER SENSORY DEPRIVATION (DARKNESS AND SILENCE) OR PERCEPTUAL DEPRIVATION (UNPATTERNED LIGHT AND WHITE NOISE). IN BOTH EXPERIMENTS, NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES WERE FOUND BETWEEN THE ISOLATED AND CONTROL SS ON ANY OF THE TESTS. HOWEVER, WHEN DATA OF THE 2 EXPERIMENTS WERE COMBINED, THE ISOLATED SS PERFORMED SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE THAN DID CONTROLS ON A TEST OF IDEATIONAL FLUENCY. IT WAS ALSO OBSERVED THAT THE PREEXPERIMENTAL SCORES OF A GROUP OF 6 ISOLATION QUITTERS WERE CONSISTENTLY LOWER, RELATIVE TO THOSE OF THE SUCCESSFUL ISOLATION ENDURERS AND CONTROLS, ON ALL 10 TESTS. ALTHOUGH NONE OF THE DIFFERENCES WERE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT (PROBABLY BECAUSE OF THE SMALL SAMPLE OF QUITTERS), THE RESULTS SUGGEST THAT LOW PREEXPERIMENTAL SCORES ON OPEN-ENDED COGNITIVE TESTS MAY INDICATE ISOLATION INTOLERANCE. (FRENCH SUMMARY) (24 REF.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)