Test anxiety and Rorschach performance.

Test Anxiety and Performance on Projective Tests

“…This clinical impression receives additional support from some of the previous studies with the anxiety groups (3,12) in which high anxious subjects tended to give poorer form level responses. The Holtzman attempts to control this variability by limiting the S to one response per card.…”

“…It is of course possible that the difference found in the second grade was solely a chance difference, but findings in previous anxiety studies (3,12) would argue against this possibility. It is of course possible that the difference found in the second grade was solely a chance difference, but findings in previous anxiety studies (3,12) would argue against this possibility.…”

Reversals in the superiority of performance of high‐ and low‐anxious Ss in verbal conditioning1

“…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 …”

Discrimination of Manifest Anxiety by the Structured-Objective Rorschach Test

“…It can range from inability to stick or complete a task along to the further extreme of smbbornness, defiance, or contentiousness" (Stone, 1958, p. 1 5 ) . A. HAMMES & R. T. OSBORNE 1955;Cox & Sarason, 1954) have also failed to find consistent differences between Low Anxiety and High Anxiety Ss on diffuse shading responses and surface shading responses, despite the claim (Klopfer, et al, 1954) that diffuse shading particularly is an indicator of anxiety. Considering the manual's interpretation of the S factor, this finding seems paradoxical, in that high S should seem more reasonably to be associated with high anxiety.…”

“…; fewer popular (P) responses (Cox & Sarason, 1954); and longer reaction times (Goodstein & Goldberger, 1955;Cox & Sarason, 1954). A secondary purpose of the present study, therefore, was to determine whether or not the SORT can discriminate manifest anxiety as successfully as the individual Rorschach protocol.…”