THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONALITY OF BASIC ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS: II. INTERPRETATION OF THE STATISTICAL DIMENSIONS.

Abstract

This is the second of a series of reports presenting the results of applying multidimensional scaling techniques to the analysis of the conceptual difficulty associated with basic electronic circuits. Two multidimensional scaling techniques were applied to thirteen basic electronic circuits. One technique was the standard technique, in which Ss judged the proximity of the circuits with one another; the second was a new technique, in which the proximity judgments were restricted to a ''conceptual difficulty'' referent. The dimensional structures of these two sets of data were analyzed and compared. The comparison showed that the two techniques yielded different dimensional structures. Using the factorial structure as a target, the two dimensional structures were orthogonally rotated to maximum congruence with the target. Multiple regression equations were computed for predicting circuit position on a single scale of conceptual difficulty from either the difficulty dimensions or the circuit characteristics factors. The multiple correlations were high in both cases, .98 when the first two difficulty dimensions are used as predictors and .92 when the three factors are used as predictors. The two rotated difficulty dimensions contributed equally to this prediction. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1964
Accession Number
AD0434251

Entities

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Circuits
  • Electronic Circuits
  • Equations
  • Judgment
  • Mathematics
  • Standards
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Regression Analysis.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems