Outerdirectedness as a Function of State Anxiety and Experimental Y Induced Success and Failure in the Educable Mentally Retarded

Ninety-five males from EMR classes were selected from school districts in the Southern California area. All subjects were given the Test Anxiety Scale for Children (TASC) and a measure of out rdirectedness. Contrary to the major hypothesis of the study, zero correlation was found between aaxiety outerdirectedness. However, subjects ranking in the upper and lower third of the anxiety scale disttibution were randomly assigned to a success, failure or control group in order to measure the degree of outerdirectedness after interp_lated success and failure treatments. The subjects were then given the TASC again to investigate the possibility of a change in anxiety. The hypothesized effects -f anxiety level and treatment conditions resulting in greater outerdirectedness did not receive support. In contradiction to previous studies, subjects in the failure condition took the least amount of time to complete the puzzles. The hypothesized effect of failure resulting in increased nxiety veceived support. A significant interaction between anxiety and tree-ent conditi ns was reported in that subjects with previously reported low anxiety increased significantly in anxiety after hall ng received the failure condition. Possible problems in using the PUZZLE TASK as a measure of outerdirectedness were discussed.