Kinesthetic Aftereffect: Can This Simple Tactual Task Really Predict Personality Attributes?

Abstract

This Bulletin is a draft for interoffice circulation.Corrections and suggestions for revision are solicited.The Bulletin should not be cited as a reference without the specific permission of the authors. It is automatically superseded upon formal publication of the material. has been abandoned by many investigators because of poor retest reliability and intermittent validity. In challenging this current consensus, we argue: first session KAE is valid; poor retest reliability simply reflects later-session bias; hence, multi-session studies should not be used to assess validity without taking this bias into account.Those recent studies which failed to support KAE validity were each multi-session in design. If our bias contention is correct, these studies should be ignored and the claim of intermittent validity is thus rebutted. Reanalysis of the most recent major multi-session, nonsupportive validity study (Weintraub, Green, & Herzog, 1973) As of 1970, the Kinesthetic Aftereffect (KAE) taskw8s regarded as measuring an important personality variable-individual differences in reactivity to stimulus intensity--and was believed to predict a wide range of behaviors (e.g. Petrie, 1967). Today, this task has been abandoned by many researchers because of abysmally poor test-retest reliability and marginal and/or intermittent validity findings (cf.below). At this crucial stage in the history of this variable, the present paper challenges the current critical consensus and presents an alternative conceptualization which reinstates KAE as a measure of a promdsing personality construct as follows:(1) We review the critique of the KAE task based on its poor test-retest reliability and then challenge this critique on logicalempirical grounds. Low test-retest reliability is here reinterpreted to indicate not that KAE scores are invalid, but rather that second-(and later-) session scores are biased. Therefore,only the firstsession scores provide unbiased measures of the dimension tapped by this task. It is thus concluded that multi-session studies should not be used to assess validity without taking this bias explicitly into account.(2) We reexamine the KAE validity literature in light of thisconclusion. We here demonstrate that those recent studies Which failed to show positive research findings each involved KAE scores from In the Petrie (1967) procedure, the subject rubs a stimulus block with one hand while he rests the other. In another variant of the KAE task, the subject simultaneously rubs two stimulus blocks--a larger one with one hand, a smaller with the other (e.g., Spilker & Callaway, 1969).. this paper is delimited to reliability and validity issues which arise when the one-hand procedure is used and does not consider issues arising with employment of the two-hand variant. Solomon, 1958;Poser, 1960;Sweeney, 1966 We contend that first-session KAE scores possess true test reliability because they have demonstrated concurrent and construct validity relationships with personality and cognitive variables. Our view is ba...

Stimulus Intensity Modulation: A Perceptual‐cognitive Approach to Life Style in the Elderly1

“…Working with college stydents, Mishara, Baker, and Kostin (1972a) found: (1) as part of their general tendency to incorporate more ·stimulation into their lives, Reducefs more frequently report tendencies to pian ahead than Augmenters; and (2) Reducers, being able to tolerate the possibly intense stimulus properties of the thought -7of their death more frequently mention death when asked to describe what they Would do if they had only one year of life remaining. More recently, Baker, Mishara, Kostin, and Parker (1974) reported, again with young adults, that Reducers seek greater stimulation in a wide variety of everyday behaviors.…”

“…According to the model offered by Baker, Mishara, Parker, and Kostin (1974), Mishara, Baker t and Kostin (1972b), Petrie (1967) and Silverman (1968), individual differences in KAE reflect individual differences in the way in which the intensity of ongoing stimulation is modulated. According to this model, individuals can be ordered on a dimension in terms of tendencies to reduce or augment the subjective intensity of incoming stimulation.…”