A further investigation of the relationship between manifest anxiety and intelligence.

Abstract

Grice (2), who worked with airman basic trainees, recently reported a significant negative relationship between Air Force Clerical Aptitude Index scores (which he states may be regarded as a general intellectual measure) and performance on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (A scale). Kerrick (3), who also worked with Air Force trainees, reported that the A scale correlates negatively with a number of Air Force tests of intellectual abilities. Matarazzo et al. (4) used college students as 5s and failed to find a significant relationship between A -scale scores and performance on the CVS; however, they did find a significant negative correlation between A -scale scores and the ACE. Schulz and Calvin (5) failed in their attempt to replicate Matarazzo et al.'s finding of a significant negative relationship between /1-scale scores and the ACE. Farber and Spence, who have made the most extensive contributions to the A -scale literature, state: "The authors have, in fact, been unable, over a period of years, to find any relation between A -scale scores of college students and conventional measures of intellectual ability, such as entrance-examination scores and grade-point averages" (1, p. 10).Because of the widespread use of the A scale as a research and clinical instrument, a resolution of these contradictory findings seems called for. The present experiment investigates some of the factors leading to the equivocal results obtained in earlier studies.

Relationship between digit span and anxiety.

“…In contrast to the negative results of studies employing neuropsychiatric patients, however, two studies using college students reported significant relationships between DS and anxiety. In one of these, the investigators (Calvin, Koons, Bingham, & Fink, 1955) selected subjects by means of Taylor MA scale, while in the second the investigators (Moldawsky & Moldawsky, 1952) experi-mentally induced anxiety in the testing situation.…”

Effect of Anxiety on Verbal and Mathematical Examination Scores

“…In most cases a low negative correlation has been found (Sarason & Mandler, 1952;Sarason, 1957;Spielberger, 1959;Matarazzo, et al, 1954;Hastings, 1944;Sarnoff, et al, 1959;Kerrick, 1955;Purcell, et al, 1952;Calvin, et al, 1955;Zweibelson, 1956;Dreger & Aiken, 1957). The first two listed above were using the College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).…”

A risk factor model predicting the relationship between stress and performance in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) training

“…In general, anxious individuals are more likely to demonstrate performance deficits involving more complex tasks and less detrimental effects on performance of simple motor tasks (see Eysenck, 1982 for a review). Anxiety-related performance deficits also have been found in specific areas of cognitive performance, including reasoning ability (e.g., Leon & Revelle, 1985); verbal skills (e.g., Zarantonello, Slaymaker, Johnson, & Petzel, 1984), mathematical operations (e.g., Calvin, Koons, Bingham, & Fink, 1955), and memory functions (e.g., Darke, 1988;Knox & Grippaldi, 1970;Mueller & Overcast, 1976). …”