THE INFLUENCE OF ANXIETY ON MEMORY PROCESSES, TAKING INTO ACCOUNT MUSIC AS A MEDIATOR (Wplyw leku na procesy pamieciowe z uwzglednieniem posredniczacej roli muzyki)

The purpose of the investigation was to study the relationship beetwen anxiety and memory. The experiment were carried out with 153 subjects, 16 - 18 years old, with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and a list containing words with different emotional valence. High-state anxious had general memory results worst than low-state anxious at a tendency level. Both low and high state anxiety was connected with neutral and positive words preference. Low-state anxious remembered significantly more neutral and positive words than high-state anxious. The next question concerned the influence of music on mood. Both relaxing and threatening music had an influence on mood's dimensions, measured by UMACL. It was expected that changes in state anxiety, reached by using appropriated kind of music, would manifest in memory preferences. It appeared that high-state anxious in threatening conditions and low-state anxious in non-threatening conditions remember more neutral and positive words. Comparisons between groups showed that high-state anxious in threatening conditions remembered more negative words and had general memory results better than high-state anxious in non - threatening conditions. Also in non-threatening conditions, high-state anxious remembered more negative words than high-state anxious in threatening conditions.