Date of Award
2-3-1989
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
Abstract
These two studies examined the influence of trait anxiety upon organization in memory. High and low trait-anxious subjects who were either high or low in verbal ability listened to tape-recorded word lists and prose passages at different levels of difficulty. Immediately after listening to each word list, the subjects were asked to orally recall all they could remember, while their written recall was used for the passages.The results revealed no trait anxiety effects, with the exception of high trait anxiety being associated with greater total recall of words. A weak positive correlation existed between trait anxiety and total recall in high trait-anxious subjects, while in the low trait-anxious subjects, trait anxiety and total recall showed a weak negative correlation. Of note is the strong finding that high verbal ability was associated with greater recall from word lists as well as prose passages, when compared to subjects with low verbal ability. Trait anxiety and verbal ability did not, however, appear to influence organizational processes in memory.It was suggested that trait anxiety's influence upon memory organization is subtle, and may likely be sensitive to such confounding factors as the subject's perception of task success or failure, the extent of state anxiety that is present, and the degree of the difficulty of the task.
Recommended Citation
Heck, Doug Gene, "The relationship between trait anxiety and organization in memory." (1989). Theses and Dissertations. 8675.
https://commons.und.edu/theses/8675