The role of task anxiety in removing the effects of acquired pleasantness in paired-associate learning

Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

7-1-1972

Abstract

Reports 3 experiments in which 64 female and 48 male undergraduates learned syllable and picture pairs in the presence of task anxiety. In Exp. I, female Ss showed superior performance over male Ss with pleasant (P) picture-paired syllables following an incidental rather than an intentional learning task during the pairing of syllables with pictures. Exp. II added task-anxiety-inducing instructions prior to the 1st task of the paradigm of Exp. I, and thereby removed the superiority of the P-paired syllables. Exp. III showed that when male Ss were given the anxiety-inducing instructions they also failed to show superior performance with P-paired syllables. It is concluded that task anxiety inhibited elicitation of affective responses by P pictures and, hence, their transfer to nonsense syllables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1972 American Psychological Association.

Publication Title, e.g., Journal

Journal of Experimental Psychology

Volume

94

Issue

2

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