Manifest Anxiety, Field Dependency, and Task Performance

This experiment investigated the effects of manifest anxiety and field dependency upon human perceptual motor performance. 32 female Ss were selected as high-anxious or low-anxious as defined by the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and field-dependent or independent as defined by the Hidden Figures Test. These Ss performed 5 tasks differing in difficulty level. The results indicated that manifest anxiety did not affect performance on any of the tasks nor was there an interaction of manifest anxiety and field dependency. However, there was an effect attributable to field dependency for the moderately difficult tasks. These results are discussed in terms of (1) chronic and emotional reactivity hypotheses, (2) response competition, and (3) differences in perception of field-dependent and field-independent persons.

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