This study was designed to answer two questions: (1) Is the systematic desensitizaion of test anxiety effective with secondary school students?; (2) Is rehxation per se as useful a technique as systematic desensitization? High test anxious secondary-school students were assigned to one of two experimental conditions, desensitization or relaxation, and met for 20 minutes daily for a period of 6 weeks. Their results were compared to those of a no treatment control group. It appeared that the experimental subjects (S.-3) underwent a significant reduction in anxiety. However, only among grade 13 Ss was there a trend toward improved academic performance. (Note: In the Ontario School System, grade 13 is for students planning to attend university.) The relaxation per se treatment was more effective in reducing general anxiety than systematic desensitization. The results and their implications for future research were discussed. (Author)

This study used the semantic differential to investigate the rating behavior on the Real and Ideal Self of 37 neurotic-depressive, 37 paranoid, and 67 other patients in hospital treatment, on admission and prior to discharge. Of five diagnostic groupings, only depressives moved from very low to relatively high Real Self rating and exhibited a positive correlation between Real Self and improvement. On the Ideal Self none of the groups showed any significant rating change during hospital stay. The results suggested that enchanced Real Self rating as a function of improved adjustment is not confined to clientcentered therapy, since it also occurs with depressives in hospital treatment and without prolonged psychotherapy.

The hypotheses that the efficacy of systematic desensitization could be attributed to a general reduction in anxiety as a result of relaxation training, to simple extinction of nonreinforced fear responses, or to the operation of placebo factors were tested as alternatives to the Counterconditioning hypothesis. A sample of 119 high-test-anxious subjects were divided randomly into six different conditions: Systematic Desensitization, Relaxation Alone, Simulation Alone, Relaxation Simulation, Attention Control, and No Treatment Control. Reduction in test anxiety was found only for subjects placed in conditions employing relaxation training. At least part of the effectiveness of systematic desensitization must be attributed to the effects of relaxation training.

No abstract

A study comparing the performance of males and females on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale extended the previous findings of a differential response pattern for males and females to a Canadian high school population. An item analysis identified 12 of the 50 items as being responsible for the higher female scores. The scores for Canadian high school students in this study were found to fall midway between those of university students and those of psychiatric patients tested in previous studies.