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Effects of Antianxiety Drug and Personality on Stress‐Inducing Psychomotor Performance Test
Author(s) -
NAKANO SHIGEYUKI,
OGAWA NOBUYA,
KAWAZU YUSUKE,
OSATO EIKO
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
the journal of clinical pharmacology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.92
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1552-4604
pISSN - 0091-2700
DOI - 10.1002/j.1552-4604.1978.tb02432.x
Subject(s) - psychomotor learning , drug , personality , psychology , stress (linguistics) , clinical psychology , test (biology) , stress test , medicine , pharmacology , psychiatry , social psychology , cognition , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , finance , economics , biology
The present study was carried out to clarify the effects of an antianxiety drug and of personality characteristics on a psychomotor performance test. Forty-eight healthy women college students were chosen from 64 volunteers as having either high or low levels of trait anxiety, neuroticism, or extroversion. Subjects with high trait anxiety and/or neuroticism tended to show a decrease in both speed and accuracy of the mirror drawing test (MDT) in the initial nondrug trials. Bromazepam, 5 mg, a benzodiazepine derivative, decreased this decrement in highly anxious subjects but worsened the speed in less anxious subjects. The personality traits of subjects, as well as the degree to which a performance test will induce stress, must be considered when evaluating the effects of antianxiety drugs on the performance of normal volunteers. The clinical anxiety-reducing efficacy of drugs may be predicted by using the MDT in subjects with high levels of anxiety and/or neuroticism.