Seating arrangement and state anxiety as related to performance on Digit Span and Digit Symbol of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.

Abstract

This research investigated the effects of dyadic seating arrangement as it related to performance on the Digit Span and Digit Symbol subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS—R) and on anxiety as measured by the “Now” version of the Affective Adjective Check List. The WAIS—R subtests and the “Now” version of the check list were administered to 40 men and 40 women to determine correlation of seating arrangement with sex of subject and performance on the WAIS—R subtests and “Now” check list. Seating arrangement (subject seated face-to-face with a desk between, versus the corner of a desk between subject and experimenter) and sex of subject had no significant effect on WAIS—R subtest scores. State anxiety was unrelated to scores or dyad seating arrangement or sex of subjects.