Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of field dependence by Witkin and his associates suggest a course of decreasing field dependency between childhood and adolescence or early adulthood. The present study is an initial attempt to explore changes in field dependency through adulthood and old age. Three groups of Ss, 17-, 30- to 39-, and 58- to 80-yr.-olds, were given three tests of field dependency, the body-adjustment, rod-and-frame, and embedded-figures tests. On each test field dependency increased significantly with age. Between sex comparisons suggest that males were significantly less field dependent at ages 17 and 30 to 39, however, these differences were not present in the geriatric group.

No abstract

IOACCHINO ROSSINI remains unique in the history of serious music. At thirty-seven, at the height of his fame and unques-G tionably the most celebrated and most widely performed opera composer in the world, he suddenly stopped writing. During the next thirty-nine years of his life he composed only two masses and a number of small pieces, but never again did he write in the medium that had brought him such renown that Stcndhal (7) called him "the greatest living artist of our time."Many explanations have been offered by many people, including the composer himself, but none seems sufficient. Newman (6) summarizes some of them: "It is said that he was piqued by the failure of the public to take to its heart what he knew to be the best of his works; that he was jealous of the growing vogue of Meyerbeer; that he had made so much money (he was given many a good Stock Exchange tip by his friends the Rothschilds) that he could indulge his natural bent towards indolence; that he wanted, in the years following the production of Wittiam TeZZ, to live in Italy with his old father, who, not knowing a word of French, would have been unhappy in Paris; and so on." T h e "and so on" includes a suggestion that he was just being perverse after having