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Meaning Formation, Gail F. Czukar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

An attempt was made to demonstrate laboratory conditions in which experiential components of meaning (i.e. perceptual and emotional correlates of observable stimuli and responses) pattern to form a gestalt. Semantic differential scales were used to measure the meaning of simple visual figures in two phases of the experiment. The first phase consisted of a pre- and post-exposure measurement of meaning with an intervening exposure to a compound visual display. In the second phase, subjects were exposed to an altered visual display and then rated the stimuli again.

Results do not support the predictions that (1) the meaning of the central …