Neuroticism, practice, and sex differences in a digit-symbol task.

136 university students participated in a digit-symbol coding task. An analysis of variance of sex, practice (distributed, massed), trial (1 to 10), and neuroticism (3 levels) yielded significant main effects due to trials, i.e., a learning effect, and sex (females performed better). Interactions of anxiety by trial and of anxiety by practice by trial were generally indicative of an inverse U-shaped function relating anxiety to performance under massed practice; subjects high and low in anxiety tended to perform worse than those of medium anxiety on some trials.