Effects of Manifest Anxiety Upon a Measure of Memory Span

This study will attempt to verify the Hullian drive theory, E = f(HxD), as others have done before, but with one exception. The H, or habit strength, will be held to be neutral so that the E, or excitatory potentials, will be a function of drive alone. Without any habit to reinforce, any increase in excitatory potential can be related directly to increase in drive. Four hypotheses were investigated: The first hypothesis was that the HA, or high-anxiety groups, will also be the high-drive groups, and this will follow for the NA and LA groups, to be determined by the performance on the digit-span test. The second hypothesis was that the high-drive groups will perform better on the digit-span tests than the low-drive groups. The third hypothesis stressed that in accordance with Hullian theory, with increased stress being introduced with a single habit tendency, the low-drive groups will be outperformed by the high-drive groups. The fourth hypothesis presumed that verification of the first three hypotheses will show the "Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale" to be capable of differentiating between high and low manifest anxiety groups and will verify the Taylor-Spence hypothesis based on Hullian theory that the HA's will outperform the LA's in a stress situation