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Of the eight hundred Ball State University freshman and sophomore students surveyed to determine the incidence of those who identified themselves as test anxious, approximately thirty percent indicated that they suffered from test anxiety. The thirty-eight students who agreed to participate in the experiment and were included in the final data analysis were students at Ball State University, Winter Quarter, 1970-1971, and described themselves as test anxious to the point of suffering moderate to severe discomfort in test-taking situations.After pre-testing, subjects in Group I (traditional SD) and Group II (modified SD) received two hours' relaxation training and visual imagery training, after which they underwent SD in the following manner: Group I received SD based on Wolpe's model. That is, while in a relaxed state they were exposed to a standard hierarchy based on items from the Suinn Test Anxiety Behavior Scale. Group I did not proceed to a new hierarchy item if more than one person indicated more than minimal anxiety after four exposures the item. In the six desensitization sessions, Group I was exposed to 13 of the 17 hierarchy items. Group II proceeded through the same standard hierarchy under the same conditions, but at a predetermined rate without repeating any items. They were exposed to the 17 hierarchy items in six sessions.Group III received relaxation training only with no presentation of hierarchy items. Group IV received no to treatment.A multi-factor analysis of variance was computed for pre- and post-test scores on the three measures for the four groups. Posteriori orthogonal comparisons were made for contrasts showing significant differences. Both methods of desensitization as well as relaxation training were effective in significantly reducing test anxiety as reflected by subjects' post-treatment STABS scores. All three experimental groups experienced significately greater reduction of test anxiety than the control group: Group II, F 31.1564; Group III, F 12.0813; and Group I, 6.0133. Group I and Group III were not significantly different from each other in terms of test anxiety reduction. However, Group II experienced significantly greater reduction of test anxiety than Group I as measured by mean difference STABS scores (F 9.7996).Significant changes did. not occur in scores in the other two measures used in the study, with one exception. There were no significant differences in pre- and post-test scores on the general anxiety measure (TMAS) for any of the groups. Group I showed a significant loss on the scholastic achievement measure, and the trend for the other groups was toward loss rather than gain. The reasons for this are not clear, but some possibilities are listed in the text of the dissertation.The results of the study indicate that the three experimental techniques for treatment of test anxiety as measured by the STABS were viable treatment methods. The modified SD method (Group II) appeared to be superior to the other two treatment methods in effectiveness.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cue-controlled relaxation on reducing test anxiety of elementary school children. The major research hypothesis was as follows: There will be a statistically significant difference in posttest median scores obtained on the Test Anxiety Scale for Children among the cue-controlled relaxation treatment, the treatment placebo and the no-treatment control groups.The research was conducted at Heidelberg American Elementary School Number Two, a Department of Defense school located in West Germany. Nine fourth and fifth grade teachers volunteered their intact classes for this study. The intact classes were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: cue-controlled relaxation, treatment placebo or no-treatment control. All students who had parental permission received their assigned experimental conditions; however, only students who received parental permission, scored 13 or higher on the pretest and who were present for the posttest were designated as subjects. Students who did not receive parental permission were taken to the library during pretesting, posttesting and when the experimental conditions were being given.The Sarason Test Anxiety Scale for Children (TASC) was used to measure test anxiety before treatment and after treatment. The TASC consists of 30 items relating to test anxiety. Each item was read to the students by their teachers. The students then responded by circling "yes" or "no" on the answer sheets.An extension of the median test for k independent samples was used to test the major null hypothesis. A chi square of 2.192 was obtained from the median test, which was not significant at the .05 level. Therefore, it was concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in TASC posttest scores among the cue-controlled relaxation, the treatment placebo and the no-treatment control groups.

The goals of this study were to investigate the effects of anxiety and intelligence upon proficiency in concept formation, On the basis of an extension of Spence’s theory of anxiety and performance to incorporate intelligence as a variable, it was predicted that anxiety and intelligence would have interactive effects on proficiency in concept formation. This expectation was based on the assumptions that the effects of anxiety on proficiency would interact with those of task difficulty, and that task difficulty was a function of the intelligence of the subject as well as the intrinsic complexity of a task. Specifically, It was expected that if task complexity was held constant, higher levels of anxiety would facilitate concept formation for high Intelligence subjects and impair concept formation for low intelligence subjects. The subjects were 56 male students enrolled in introductory psychology who scored in the extreme quartiles on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. The high and low anxiety groups were each divided into high and low intelligence groups by splitting them at the median intelligence score for the total group. This procedure yielded four experimental groups designated HiA-HiIQ, LoA-’HiIQ, HiA-LoIQ, and LoA-LoIQ. All subjects were given two concept formation tasks, derived from those developed by Bruner, and required to deduce the attributes which constituted the concept from information provided as follows: the attributes included in the concept were deducible primarily by comparing negative instances of the concept to an initial positive instance, whereas the attributes not included in the concept were deducible by comparing positive instances to the initial positive instance. The necessary information was provided within the first nine instances; four additional redundant instances were given. After the subjects had examined each instance, they were required to report their conclusions about the concept by recording either 1) that they knew the attribute was included in the concept (I), or 2) that they knew the attribute was not included (N), or 3) that they did not know whether the attribute was or was not included (?). The subjects’ reports were scored correct or erroneous by comparing them to the report that could be correctly deduced from the information given by the instances presented. The results for correct r snorts of knowledge of attribute inclusion showed that, as predicted, anxiety facilitated the concept formation proficiency of high intelligence subjects, and interfered with the concept formation proficiency of low intelligence subjects. This finding was explicated by examining the subjects’ erroneous reports, erroneous reports were divided into six error types depending upon the report made by the subject as compared to the report that co Id be correctly deduced. Interactive effects of anxiety and intelligence were found only for those types of erroneous reports in which the information given established that an attribute either was (I) or was not (N) included in the concert but the subject made the wrong one of these two reports. The fact that this effect was found for only this kind of error was interpreted to be consistent with the extended theory of anxiety and performance. Additional findings showed that high intelligence subjects and low intelligence subjects tended to make different types of errors in concept formation. For the first task only, high intelligence subjects made more erroneous reports than did low intelligence subjects of the type in which they reported that they did not know about the inclusion of an attribute in the concept(?), when they could have deduced that it was included (I). Low intelligence subjects made many more errors than high intelligence subjects of the type in which they reported that an attribute was included in the concept (I), when the information had not established whether or not it was included (?). / This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded by Ciara Healy.

INTRODUCTION The Problem Cognitive controls are important for the understanding of perceptual, motivational, and other personality processes is a set of variables which have been variously termed cognitive controls(55, 70, 105), cognitive system-principles (43, 102), cognitive attitudes (39, 55, 100), cognitive styles (28, 59), perceptual attitudes (53, 56, 61), Anschauungen (53), coping modes (60), and regulatory structures or delay mechanisms (55), Cognitive controls are stable patterns or styles of response characteristic of an individual in a wide variety of situations but differing considerably from one individual to another. They have been described as preferred ways of solving tasks requiring adaptation, and they serve as regulating structures which ‘Modulate, facilitate, inhibit, counteract or otherwise qualify the discharge of need-tension in behavior” (55). Cognitive controls have been defined as “sets or dispositions of the organism--a sort of prevailing structure- -which determine the pattern or style of an individual's response to situations” (70). Whereas needs, drives, and other motivational forces serve to energize or “push” behavior, these control aspects of personality act to channelize, direct, and regulate behavior. These control processes have been emphasized and have had extensive experimental investigation by G. S. Klein (15, 16, 28, 37, 39, 43, 44, 53-37, 59, 61, 100, 102, 103, 105), K. S. Lazarus (69, 70, 71), H. A, Witkin (125, 126), and their respective associates and students, particularly In the field of perception. A number of control dimensions have been isolated and found to account for a significant amount of the individual differences in perceptual and motivational studies. Among these dimensions are “tolerance vs. resistance to the unstable” and “physiognomic vs, literal” (53, 54, 60, 61), “categorizing behavior” (28), “focusing** (lOO), “interference proneness** (55, 70), "verbalness” (70), and the one used in the present experiment, “leveling vs. sharpening** (37, 39, 43, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 90, 102, 103). Leveling and Sharpening. Leveling and Sharpening cognitive controls were operationally defined by Klein and his co-workers in terms of a dimension of perceptual accuracy. The defining task (The Schematizing Test) requires the subject to judge the size of squares presented visually, the sizes increasing gradually as the task continues. In their early studies the Klein group analyzed the subjects' responses to this task for stable patterns, and identified at least two major modes or styles of response: progressive underestimation leading to inaccurate judgment, and appropriate shifting resulting in consistently high accuracy of judgment. The individuals at the lower end of the accuracy distribution were called Levelers, and those at the upper end were called Sharpeners (53). Subsequent experimentation led to a more precise characterization of these cognitive controls, Klein found that Levelers had greater difficulty in separating figure from ground in three situations, including the Gottschaldt figures test (53). Holzrean (39), working with Klein (43) demonstrated that assimilation effects in visual, auditory, and kinesthetic time-error were greater for Levelers than for Sharpeners, Using a Gestalt neurophysiological model to explain their findings, Holzman and Klein suggested that differences between Levelers and Sharpeners may be due to characteristic differences in the brain field: Levelers have weaker boundaries between traces in the brain field, and there is a tendency for greater exchange of energy between traces. Noting Koffka's (62) explanation of retroactive inhibition as being due to the interference with each other of similar traces, Holzman predicted that if trace boundaries are weaker in Levelers, this group should show greater retroactive inhibition than Sharpeners (39). Sharpeners should more easily maintain the discrete differences between stimuli, resulting in more accurate discrimination and less interference. The purpose of the present experiment was to demonstrate the generality of Leveling and Sharpening in a new situation, and to assess the influence of these controls on the expression of some type of motivational or drive behavior. Since a great deal of work had been done recently with manifest anxiety. Interpreted as drive (108, 116), this variable was selected for study in conjunction with the Leveling-Sharpening cognitive controls. / This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded by Ciara Healy.