Understanding prism adaptation: An individual differences approach

Abstract

Adaptation of college students to wedge prisms was studied in terminal exposure and continuous exposure conditions. The adaptation experience was preceded by the administration of a battery of pretests designed to evaluate several visual and motor abilities thought to be involved in adaptation performance. Ability indices were formed for each subject on the basis of his performance on the pretests. These radices were then used in multiple regression analyses with several measures of adaptation as dependent variables. The ability indices accounted for substantial portions of the dependent measure variance. In the terminal exposure condition, amount of adaptation was positively correlated with indices of eye ability and negatively correlated with indices of hand ability. Intermanual transfer of adaptation was positively correlated with hand abilities and negatively correlated with eye abilities. In the continuous exposure condition, amount of adaptation was positively correlated with eye abilities and negatively correlated with hand abilities. It was suggested that theoretical and experimental approaches may be oversimplified if they do not take into account the possibility that at least some of the differences in the adaptation shown by different subjects is attributable to differences in abilities that are basic to the process of adaptation. © 1975 Psychonomic Society, Inc.