An examination of the relationship between anxiety and performance on prospective and retrospective memory tasks

Abstract

The present study investigated the association between self-reported state anxiety, trait anxiety and performance on closely matched prospective and retrospective memory tasks and on a working memory (reading span) task. Eysenck and Calvo's (1992) processing efficiency theory suggests that the deleterious effects of anxiety on cognitive task performance are mediated by worry occupying working memory. They suggest that the adverse effects of anxiety would be most marked when people are experiencing acute anxiety states on tasks that place high demands on working memory capacity and are treated as secondary tasks, conditions that typically occur for prospective remembering. Sixty-three undergraduate students were allocated to high, medium and low anxiety conditions using tertile splits of ranked state and trait anxiety scores. It was found that people with elevated levels of state anxiety performed more poorly on a prospective memory test than people with lower levels of state anxiety. No difference between these groups in retrospective memory or reading span performance was found. Trait anxiety scores were unrelated to performance on any of the memory tasks. The results suggest that state anxiety has a direct impact on prospective memory performance that is independent of its impact on working memory capacity.