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Results of a previous study (Gardner, 1961) suggested that independent principles of cognitive control are involved in ( a) extensiveness and ( b) selectiveness of attention deployment. The present study extends these results by demonstrating that differential predictions can be made even when criterion scores for the two control principles are obtained from a single set of judgements. It is also shown that individual differences in selective attention can be observed whether compelling irrelevant stimuli enclose, are enclosed by, or are interpolated among relevant stimuli, and that two forms of inhibition-extensiveness of scanning and inhibition of irrelevant motoric responses-may be associated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of individual consistencies in cognitive behaviours by Gardner and others led to postulation of a cognitive control principle called extensiveness of scanning that could in part determine the apparent size of standard stimuli in a relatively difficult size estimation test. In the present study, electro-oculography was employed to obtain precise measures of the scanning strategies 60 subjects employed in four size estimation tests. In addition to providing evidence of consistent individual scanning syndromes, the study showed that extensiveness of scanning is a determinant of apparent size in the relatively difficult size estimation test in question. The study also confirmed Piaget's hypothesis (see Piaget, 1961) that the apparent size of a stimulus is a function of the duration of a single centration upon it. Subjects were shown to be consistently different from each other in these centration effects, independent of the significant negative correlation of the effect with age. These individual differences were significantly associated with the apparent size of standard stimuli in a relatively simple size estimation test. A predicted relationship between extensiveness of scanning and the number of conceptually distant responses produced in a free association test was not confirmed. Predicted relationships were confirmed, however, between extensiveness of scanning and the strength of the defence mechanisms of isolation and projection and the degree of generalized delay, judged on the basis of Rorschach test protocols. Predictions of specific aspects of response to the Rorschach inkblots were also confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study which explores the stability of cognitive controls is presented. A total of 38 females, who had been given criterion test for several control principles three years earlier, were given another test for cognitive controls, which include equivalence range, scanning, leveling-sharpening, and constricted-flexible control. The correlations between the original test and the retest support the assumption that cognitive controls are relatively enduring features of cognitive organization. It was found out that none of the retest means is significantly different from that in the original test, except from the significant reduction of constant errors in size estimation.