An experimental study of the concept of negation

• Main Author: Wilder, David
• Language: en_US
• Published: Boston University 2017
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/2144/24643

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University === The primary purpose of this study was to test the negation hypothesis in a clinical setting, and secondarily to test two hypotheses relating negation to defensiveness. More specifically this study was designed to demonstrate that the seeming pathology of negation responses is in fact significant of anxiety-association. Forty student nurses responded to a 20-item Word Association test under affirmation and negation instructions. After a five week interval, their affirmation and negation responses, matched for length in letters and log frequency of occurrence in the English language, were used in a tachistoscopic recognition task. Practice effects in the tachistoscopic recognition task were controlled by splitting each subject's responses into a first half and a second half. Order of presentation of the affirmation and negation sets for the word association test was controlled by giving the affirmation set first to half the subjects, and the negation set first to the other half. [TRUNCATED]