“…Cox & Sarason, 1954), and that HA Ss perform better under condibons where reassurance IS given by the E than under condibons where reassurance is not given (eg, Sarason, 1958a) On the basis of the above assumptions, the followmg should be expected Under nonthreatenmg conditions m a verbal condiboning task, because anxiety is not being evoked and the reinforcement IS of high value, HA Ss should mcrease task appropnate responses throughout Because of low need for and quick sababon with the remforcement, LA Ss should not mcrease taskappropnate responses as much as HA Ss These effects should be reversed under theatenmg condibons For HA Ss, threat should serve as a cue for self-relevant responses which compete with task-relevant responses and impede perfonnance, while for LA Ss, threat should mcrease achievement motivation and strengthen task-relevant responses To summarize, the cenbal hypothesis of this study is that there will be a sigmficant anxiety by threat mteraction, the source of which IS predicted as follows For anxiety (a) Under nonthreatemng condibons, HA Ss will perform sigmficantly better than LA Ss (b) Under threatenmg condibons, LA Ss will perform significantly better than HA Ss. For threat (c) HA Ss will perform significantly better under nonthreat than under threat (d) LA Ss will perform significantly better under threat than under nonthreat Since threat is expected to have opposite effects on HA and LA Ss, no significant mam effects due to anxiety or threat are expected Smce there is evidence to suggest that task complexity may mteract with anxiety, threat, or both to affect performance (Sarason, i960), this factor was investigated by usmg a complex verbal conditionmg task for half the Ss and a snnple task for the other half The mclusion of complexity and sex as vanables in this study was motivated by empirical, rather than theoretical concems, and no formal predictions regarding their effects were made METHOD …”