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Abstract
Although anxiety-related responding is associated with performance deficits on various cognitive and behavioral tasks, research exploring the relation between anxiety and IQ performance is equivocal and characterized by methodological limitations. In the present study, 80 undergraduate students completed a battery of self-report anxiety instruments and WAIS-III performance sub-tests. Physiological data were also recorded. Using multivariate statistical procedures (factor analysis, path analysis, multiple regression) that explored relations among testing anxiety, general anxiety, physiological responsivity, and online anxiety, only testing anxiety (negatively) and heart rate reactivity (positively) accounted for significant unique variance in predicting performance IQ. The negative impact of testing anxiety was particularly relevant to the block design and picture arrangement sub-tests and heart rate reactivity positively was associated with performance on the digit-symbol coding sub-test. Study limitations are presented and results are discussed within the context of deficit and interference models such as processing efficiency theory.
Notes
Note that the performance motivation variable was not included in the path model due to the extremely skewed nature of this variable (skewness=−1.26) and its low inter-correlations with all self-report anxiety measures, heart rate responsivity, online anxiety, and gender (r=.01–.13).