Browsing by Author "Laws, Eric L."

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    The effect of instructions on scenic beauty ratings of riverscapes and the prediction of those ratings by environmental questionaires
    Laws, Eric L. (Virginia Tech, 1990-04-30)
    The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of instructions on scenic beauty ratings of riverscapes. 128 college student observers viewed and rated 200 slides of riverscapes for overall scenic beauty with a magnitude estimation scaling procedure. There were two groups of observers differing in the instructions each received. One group received biased instructions which emphasized the presence of industry while the other group received neutral instructions. The hypothesis that overall scenic beauty ratings would be lower for the biased instructional group was supported. Also, it was found that the Easy Living scale from the Leisure Activities Blank (McKechnie, 1975) interacting with the effects if the manipulation predicted these ratings.
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    An Investigation of Color Memory as a Function of Hue, Saturation, Lightness and Observer Imagery Vividness for Blue, Green and Orange Test Hues
    Laws, Eric L. (Virginia Tech, 2000-01-31)
    Fifty-two college-aged observers participated in an experiment assessing color memory via a PowerPoint '97 computer display program which varied one of the three dimensions of hue, saturation and lightness at a time. Consistent with previous research, errors were greater for the lightness conditions followed by saturation, and least for hue conditions Additionally, a signal detection analysis indicated that d-prime was greatest for the hue conditions, less for saturation and lowest for lightness conditions. There were also significant but unpredicted differences in response criterion which may reflect task difficulty. Scores on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1973) were, in general, not correlated with performance on these color memory tasks, inconsistent with previous research. The role of complexity of neuronal circuitry, the significance for opponent-process, trichromatic and retinex color vision theories and the relationship to Sokolov's model of color memory were discussed. Also, it was concluded that investigators of color memory using a computer display are well-advised to calibrate the monitor with a colorimeter because the internal computer units may be unreliable indexes of changes in hue, saturation and lightness.