The effects of anxiety upon psychomotor performance

This paper describes an experiment which examined the effects of anxiety on choice reaction time and movement time. A balanced repeated measures design was adopted in which eight female subjects performed a six-choice visual reaction task in 'no anxiety' and 'anxiety' conditions. The anxiety condition required subjects to jump from a balcony 15 feet (4.57 m) into a foam-filled pit below. Subjects in the anxiety condition demonstrated significantly higher levels of cognitive anxiety and longer reaction times than those in the no anxiety condition. The analysis of the reaction time data also revealed a significant interaction between anxiety and block. No significant effects emerged in the case of movement time.