Effects of extraversion, anxiety, and sex on children's verbal fluency and coding task performance

Seventy-eight boys and 71 girls (ages eight to 18 years) were assigned to one of eight groups on the basis of scores on the Junior Esysenck Personality Inventory, the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, and sex of the S. The Ss were administered a simple and a complex verbal fluency task and the coding subtest of the WISC. It was found that extraverted children of both sexes did better than introverted children on both measures of verbal fluency and the nonverbal coding task. Anxiety influenced girl's performance on the more complex verbal fluency task, but did not alter boys' performance. The present findings were discussed in relation to the adult literature relating extraversion, anxiety, and verbal fluency.