1. INTRODUCTION HYPOTHESES MEASURES RESULTS Correspondence to: kneppm@mountunion.eduPresented at the 26 th Annual Association for Psychological Science Convention, San Francisco, CA., May 2014 RESULTS Participants One hundred college students 71% women Mean Age: 19.41, SD=1.16 93% Caucasian No exclusionary criteria PARTICIPANTS CONCLUSIONS Group Administration Influences on Design and Language Fluency Since much of neuropsychological testing is done in quiet, individual settings, the impact of group administration related to right and left hemispheres is not well known. Patients with lesions on the left temporal lobe had lower written word fluency compared to healthy controls (Tucha, Smely, and Lange 1999). The left hemisphere is more active in patients with generalized anxiety disorder and individuals with higher trait worry (Tucker, Antes, Stenslie, & Bernhardt, 1978; Wu et al., 1991). Students who performed tasks together or under observation increased their speed compared to students who complete tasks alone (Dashiell 1930). H1: Students in the fast condition would increase their design and written word output, as well increase their error rate. However, their error rate would not be higher than the slow condition. H2: High trait worriers would produce more words in written word fluency, but show impairment in performance on design fluency. H3: Students high in emotion reappraisal would perform higher on word fluency, while emotional suppressors would perform higher on design fluency. Participants within the fast condition produced more designs than those in the slow condition (F (1, 91) = 7.17, MSE = 44.62, p <.01) Participants who reported high trait worry in the slow condition had the highest errors (F (1, 86) = 4.93, MSE =.06, p <.05) Participants with low emotion suppression created more designs than those with high emotion suppression (F (1, 89) = 5.19, MSE = 42.89, p <.05) Participants with lower state anxiety had a trend toward significance for more words produced, as well as lower written word fluency error ratios. (F (1, 79) = 3.10, MSE = 92. 74, p <.10), (F (1, 79) = 3.50, MSE =.002, p <.07) Five Point Test: A figural fluency test consisting of 40 dot matrices created to resemble the five-dot design on a standard die (Regard, Strauss, & Knapp, 1982) and altered to a sixty second time constraint Written Word Fluency: Adapted from the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (Lee, Loring, Newell, & McCloskey, 1994. 3 sixty-second trials were run each with a new letter. Demographics Questionnaire: Age and gender were measured. This page also measured the impact of the confederate and whether or not they suspected the other person was part of the study. Penn State Worry Questionnaire: Trait worry was calculated using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990). The PSWQ consists of 16-item scale designed to measure trait worry levels. Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003): The questionnaire consists of 10 self-report items that assesses emotion suppression and reappraisal strategies. Depression Anxiety Stress Scales: the 21-item short form version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) that examines state depression, anxiety, and tension/stress. Overall students in the fast condition produced significantly more unique designs than those in the slow condition. High trait worriers had an increased design error ratio; but there were no trait worry differences related to total words produced or written word error ratio. High trait worriers showed decreases in right hemispheric activity. This decrease led to negative impacts on design fluency and an increase in perseverative errors. Figure 1: Condition effect on unique designs Figure 2: Impact of trait worry and condition on design error ratio Morgan P. Myers, Erin R. Krafka, Ashley N. Boulton, and Michael M. Knepp University of Mount Union