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Beginning with the results of Girschick on the asymptotic distribution of principal component loadings and those of Lawley on the distribution of unrotated maximum likelihood factor loadings, the asymptotic distributions of the corresponding analytically rotated loadings is obtained. The principal difficulty is the fact that the transformation matrix which produces the rotation is usually itself a function of the data. The approach is to use implicit differentiation to find the partial derivatives of an arbitrary orthogonal rotation algorithm. Specific details are given for the orthomax algorithms and an example involving maximum likelihood estimation and varimax rotation is presented. (Author)

Evidence is given to indicate that Lawley's formulas for the standard errors of maximum likelihood loading estimates do not produce exact asymptotic results. A small modification is derived which appears to eliminate this difficulty. (Author)

In a manner similar to that used in the orthogonal case, formulas for the asymptotic standard errors of analytically rotated oblique factor loading estimates are obtained. This is done by finding expressions for the partial derivatives of an oblique rotation algorithm and using previously derived results for unrotated loadings. These include the results of Lawley for maximum likelihood factor analysis and those of Girshick for principal components analysis. Details are given in cases including direct oblimin and direct Crawford-Ferguson rotation. Numerical results for an example involving maximum likelihood estimation with direct quartimin rotation are presented. They include simultaneous tests for significant loading estimates. (Author)

Standard errors for maximum likelihood estimates of factor loadings are expressed in terms of the inverse of an augmented information matrix. This formulation arises naturally by viewing the problem as one in constrained maximum likelihood estimation. The constraints correspond to the form of rotation used. Results are given for canonical rotation and analytic rotations in the orthomax family. (Author)