The present investigation is an 11-13 follow-up of the subsequent psychiatric histories of children who did or did not participate in a preventively oriented school mental health program between 1958-1961. Clinical "risk" or "vulnerability" judgments were available for program children, and reasonably comprehensive third-grade test data were available for all children. Early detected vulnerable children were found to have disproportionately high later appearances in a community-wide psychiatric register. Retrospective analyses of the third-grade test data indicated that peer judgment was, by far, the most sensitive predictor of later psychiatric difficulty.

Recent research on modelmg (eg, Bandura, 1965) has been provocadve because it has suggested the important role which the observation of others plays m mfiuencmg social behavior The research reported here extends the exploration of modeling effects to behavior m an mtellectual performance situation An attempt at such an extension seemed of value m two ways First, It could mdicate the degree to which observmg the performance of someone else facihtates one's own performance Second, it could provide a theoretical Imk between research on a personahty vanable, test anxiety, and research on modehngOn what basis might one expect the variables of test anxiety and the observation of others to be Imked? Previous theonzmg on anxiety provides some suggestive clues Anxiety may be viewed as an mferred class of mtemal responses, consisting of self-oriented thoughts and emotional reactions The highly anxious mdividual IS one who is especially prone to become preoccupied with himself, his madequacies, and the impression he makes on others These preoccupations may be viewed as mterfermg with many ongomg activities Over the past 15 years considerable research has been carried out which relates to an interfermg response mterpretation of one type of anxiety, test anxiety (Ruebush, 1963, Sarason, i960) A highly test-anxious person is operationally defined as one who ainits to tension, worry, and feelmg upset before, durmg, and after takmg tests He has been hypothesized to be fearful of tests and of situations m which he feels he might be evaluated

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This experiment dealt with the relationship between a personality variable and behavior in coacting groups. 96 male Ss differing in test anxiety (high, middle, low) were equally divided at random into 2 groups and given either a paired-associate learning task or 2 performance tasks (vowel cancellation and multiplication problems) under 1 of 2 conditions. Half the Ss worked in coacting groups of 4 members each while the remainder worked on the tasks alone. With the learning task, no significant differences were found between Ss who learned in groups and those who learned alone regardless of anxiety level. With the performance tasks, the group situation was detrimental for both the high- and middle-anxious Ss while facilitative for the low-anxious Ss on the vowel cancellation task; however, no significant effects were found on the multiplication task.