Anxiety and stress in learning: the role of intraserial duplication.

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Abstract
The present study is a repetition of an earlier study on the relationship between serial learning and personality variables under 2 conditions of stress produced by electric shock. In the earlier study marked differences were found between groups characterized as having high and low anxiety. The main basis of these differences was an impairment of performance by the low anxiety group under the stress conditions. In the earlier study, consonant nonsense syllables were used with a minimum of intraserial duplication. In the present study consonant nonsense syllables with a very high degree of such duplication were used. This difference in tasks produced a very large difference in results. No significant differences between the performance of the high and low anxiety groups were found. The obtained mean differences between the groups were actually in the opposite direction to that found in the earlier study. This is in accord with the results of Montague and Lucas and the hypothesis that task difficulty reverses the usual anxiety-avoidance learning relationships is supported.

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