Anxiety and Speech Production: Some Support for the Inverted U-Shaped Function

Abstract

36 subjects were videorecorded while interacting dyadically with an exotic harmless snake. Tapes were analyzed to give both measures of contact with the snake and speech production for each member of the dyads. From previous research, it was assumed that initiating contact with the snake would create some anxiety even among those subjects who acknowledged no self-reported fear of snakes prior to the experiment. Predicted greater variability in speech-production scores was found for the high snake-contact group compared to the low-contact group when scores were split about the median on contact and the variances compared. It is argued that the result is consistent with an inverted-U relationship between anxiety and speech production.