[An experimental study of the hand test situation: effects of test definition during instruction on hand test...

The purpose of this study was to examine how Hand Test performance is affected by test definition included with task instructions. The Hand Test was administered to male college students equally divided into three groups which differed in terms of the type of test definition included with the task instruction as follows: (1) Emotionally disturbed test definition (ED Group); (2) Imagery test definition (IM Group); and, (3) Standard instruction with no test definition (N Group). The MMPI was subsequently administered to all subjects with the following results. The ED Group revealed higher DES and lower ACQ scores than the N Group. The IM Group obtained higher DES and TEN scores and lower ACQ and ICP (CRIP) scores than the N Group. The ED Group exhibited positive correlations between PASS, ACQ and ICP (CRIP) scores and psychopathological MMPI scales while the IM Group revealed negative correlations between ACQ, PASS, TEN, ICP (CRIP), FEAR and DES scores and psychopathological MMPI scales. These results indicated in general that Hand Test performance is sensitive to the test situation and that this factor should be taken into account when Hand Test responses are interpreted.