TEST ANXIETY AND INTELLIGENCE IN CONCEPT FORMATION

Denny (1966) has provided suggestive evidence of the interactive effects of intelligence and manifest anxiety in determining concept-learning proficiency. High anxiety facilitated the performance of highly intelligent (HI ) Ss, but the reverse was true for Ss of low intelligence (LI). These results were explained by assuming that HI Ss had available dominant, correct habits or would learn correct habits more quickly than LI Ss. On the other hand, the relative strengths of correct and incorrect habits for LI Ss were assumed to be reversed. The present study replicated Denny's experiment, measuring anxiety by the Test Anxiety Questionnaire (TAQ), not the Manifest Anxiety Scale. Four groups of 24 Ss from introductory psychology classes made up the anxiety-intelligence combinations. Intelligence level was defined by the composite centile score on the ACT. Ss with TAQ scores of 200 (M = 233.5) or above (upper one-third) were designated HA and those with scores of 160 ( M = 114.7) and below (lower one-third) were designated LA. The HA and LA groups were each split into HI ( M = 91) and LI (M= 58) groups by dividing each at the median ACT score (Mdn = 68th centile) for the total sample. The procedure replicated Denny's exactly. Ss' task involved deducing which of four attributes (from a possible nine) were contained in a concept, and, the specific value ( / , : , * ) associated with each concept, i.e., B ( / ) , E( :), F(*), H ( :). S could systematically deduce the attributes contained in the concept through information provided when he was informed that the instance (the presentation of nine attributes and associated values) contained or did not contain the concept and through differences in the values of attributes between each later instance and the first. Three kinds of correct conclusions were possible: attribute was contained in the concept ( I ) , ir was not contained in the concept ( N ) , or insufficient information was provided to decide whether the attribute was included in the concept ( ? ) . The mean numbers of correct conclusions during acquisition were: LI-HA: 35.96; LI-LA: 31.83; HI-HA: 39.83; and HI-LA: 41.30. Intelligence was a significant main effect ( F = 22.67, d f = 1/92, p < .001) which was expected because the task was selected to discriminate ability levels. The interaction was also significant ( F = 4.00, df = 1/92, p < .05). With low intelligence the performance of the HA Ss exceeded that of LA Ss. The reverse was true with Ss of high intelligence. In addition, and following Denny, Ss' incorrect conclusions were divided into LWO classes ( a ) errors from complete information procerses, which occurred whenever one conclusion relating an attribute to the concept (an I or N conclusion) had been established as correct by the information given, and another such conclusion had been drawn erroneously by S and, (b ) errors from incomplete information procem, which were all others. The analysis of errors from complete information processing yielded statistical significance only for the main effect of intelligence ( F = 10.51, d f = 1/92, 0 < .01). The means were: LI-HA: 14.17; LI-LA: 14.17; HI-HA: 19.79; and HI-LA: 20.54. For the analysis of errors from incomplete information processing, no Fs exceeded 1.19. The present results indicate that high anxiety (TAQ) does not unequivocally lead to inferior performance (relative to low anxiety) when Ss are given ego-stress instructions. Also, the data, when compared ro those of Denny, indicate the differential results obtained when the TAQ and MAS are used to identify HA and LA Ss.