Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-1989

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major Professor

Patricia A. Beitel

Committee Members

Joy DeSensi, Dennie Kelley

Abstract

Both Sarason (1960) and Singer (1980) focused their research studies on the adverse affects of anxiety in individuals. Sarason (1960) discussed how high test anxious individuals had poorer performances than low test anxious individuals on ability tests. In conjuction, Singer (1980) discussed how high levels of anxiety would be harmful to performance on psychomotor skill tasks. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the effects of two music conditions on anxiety level during the performance of complex and simple skill tests. Forty-one college volunteers from three beginning racquetball classes were used to test the effects of state anxiety on low and high anxious students during skill test performance with a music condition present. The skills used in this study were a serve and a rally racquetball test. According to their scores on the trait form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the students were assigned to either the low anxious or high anxious group. The groups were required to participate in two separate testing situations. The protocol for one testing situation consisted of a rally and a serve test administration. Before each test, the students completed the state form of the STAI. During the second test administration, the low anxious group received the high intense music and the high anxious group received the low intense music while testing. The results of a correlated t test for state anxiety/skill performance and music indicated the following from the first to second test administration: (a) state anxiety level in low and high anxious students was not different for complex and simple skill tasks, (b) high intense music for low anxious subjects appeared to be beneficial to performance on simple tasks but not on complex tasks, and (c) low intense music for high anxious students did not enhance performance on complex or simple skill tasks. A t test for independent samples revealed that low anxious students did not perform better than high anxious students on complex or simple skill tasks on the first test administration.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS