Investigation of the validity of the Kanji Maze Technique as a measure of rigidity and relational framing

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop the Kanji (Chinese characters) Maze Technique (KMT) as a new measure for assessing both rigidity and relational framing, and to investigate KMT's validity as a measure of the rigidity. In addition, a preliminary analysis of KMT's validity as a measure of relational framing was investigated. A total of 67 undergraduate students answered questionnaires and completed the KMT and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). After the experiment, six raters evaluated the KMT's believability based on the participants' feedback. KMT's validity as a measure of rigidity was examined through a comparison with WCST, and by assessing its believability. These results showed that the KMT is a valid measure of rigidity. In the preliminary analysis of KMT's validity as a measure of relational framing, the feature of reaction time in each section was investigated. The results showed that the reaction time of the Set section was less influenced by choosing a route, so it was shown that there was possibility to apply the reaction time to measure relational framing.View full abstract