Effects of Gender, Anxiety and Affective Valence on Working Memory Task Performance

Abstract

The present study, was designed to investigate the gender influence of, anxiety and valence, on working memory task performance. For this purpose, a sample of 60 students (30 males and 30 females) of the age range 18-25 years from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, (Deemed to be University) Patiala took part in this study. A2 (Gender: male and female) ×2 (Trait anxiety: low and high) ×2 (State anxiety: low and high) ×3 (Valence: positive, negative neutral) mixed factorial design was used. Gender, trait anxiety and state anxiety were treated has between factor, and valance was within subject factor. Working memory task performance in term of hit, false alarm was observed as depended variable. Data was collected by using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and emotional working memory task. The data was analysed by using statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) the results indicated that high anxiety people detected higher level of negative valance pictures during working memory task. Therefore our study clearly revealed that anxiety is a potential agent to affect the information being processed in working memory. In addition, female participants performed better under negative and neutral valence condition than positive valance. The obtained results are indicative of gender impact on information affect level being processed during working memory task. The findings of the study have clearly demonstrated that, people remember the negative information highly while processing the information in working memory. Therefore, the findings may be applied in the area of positive psychology, human resource management and in day to day communication.