Effect of Level of Manifest Anxiety and Type of Pretraining on Timing Behavior

Abstract

A great many studies have shown that subjects who differ in level of anxiety, as measured by the Manifest Anxiety Scale (Taylor, 1953), perform significantly differently on eyelid-conditioning and verbal-learning tests. There has, however, been no study investigating the effect of level of anxiety on complex operant conditioning. If it could be demonstrated that low anxiety and high anxiety have differential effects on operant conditioning, it would add generality to the Manifest Anxiety Scale as a selective device. To this end, high-anxiety and low-anxiety subjects were trained on a timing task with a schedule of differential reinforcement of low rate of responding (DRL). Furthermore, since animal studies show that performance on such a schedule is affected by the nature of pretraining (Schmaltz and Isaacson, 1966), the role of pretraining was also investigated. Briefly, the experimental design consisted of giving highand low-anxiety subjects either interfering pretraining (fixed-ratio schedule, which generates a high rate of responding), facilitatory pretraining (fixed-interval schedule, which generates a lower rate of responding with 'scallops'), or no pretraining.