Anxiety and working memory capacity

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to measure the comparative working memory capacities of highly anxious and low anxiety subjects. Experiment 1 employed a traditional digit span measure of capacity requiring storage only. The measure utilised in Experiment 2 required subjects to both process and store information. Highly anxious subjects exhibited significantly smaller measures of capacity in relation to the low anxiety groups in both experiments. It is concluded that high levels of anxiety reduces both the storage and processing capacity of working memory.