Abstract
Studies of the relationship between the level of anxiety and degree of response stereotypy have reported findings which not only contradict one another but in varying degrees are inconsistent with both clinical and drive theory. The clinical expectation is that anxiety and response stereotypy are positively related, whereas drive theory predicts a negative relationship when response choices are equipotent. A study is reported wherein Ss were required to randomize choices regarding the outcomes of an “unbiased” coin. The essential feature of this task is that Ss must maintain a set for randomness. The results indicated: (1) high anxious Ss were more stereotyped than low anxious Ss, (2) the anxiety-stereotypy relationship depended upon the length of the response sequence analyzed, and (3) upon the temporal stage of the task (i.e., first vs second half). It was concluded that the drive-theory model is not applicable to measures of response stereotypy derived from binary choice tasks. An alternative hypothesis was presented which takes account of both experimental manipulations of drive level and changes in response stereotypy in terms of individual differences in attention responsiveness.
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