Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Harley, Heidi

Keywords

State Dependence, Implicit Memory, Anxiety, Motor Memory

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Procedural memory is memory of a skill that is well-rehearsed and automatic. It is used during many common activities, such as playing sports, playing musical instruments, and typing. However, performance of these skills under pressure is often negatively affected by anxiety. Previous work on memory has determined that when one learns something in a specific state, one recalls that information best when in the same state. This state-dependent memory is effective with a variety of states, particularly with explicit memory, such as a list of words. How state-dependence applies to procedural tasks is less well understood. The goal of this thesis was to apply state-dependent memory to procedural skills in hopes of reducing anxiety's negative effects on performance. To that end, skilled typists (40 total, 28 female, 12 male) practiced typing an unfamiliar passage in either an anxious or a relaxed state, and then typed the same passage again in either the same, e.g. anxious-anxious, or a different, e.g., relaxed-anxious, state. Participants' typing speed and errors did not differ across conditions, potentially because all participants relaxed over the course of the study.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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