Effect of One Day of Sensory Deprivation on a Battery of Open-Ended Cognitive Tests

Abstract

In an attempt to test the hypothesis that performance on unstructured or open-ended cognitive tests will be impaired by sensory deprivation (SD), the Guilford battery of creative thinking, consisting of 10 subtests, was administered to a group of 18 experimental Ss before and after one day of SD. The results showed that, relative to a group of 18 controls, only the performance on associational fluency was significantly impaired. Three possible explanations were offered for these essentially negative results.