Adults with Intellectual Disabilities with And without Anxiety Disorder: The Zeigarnik Effect Paradigm Revisited

Anastasia  Alevriadou

Zeigarnik effect refers to the phenomenon whereby “people will recall interrupted tasks much better than completed ones." The present study explored the relationship between Zeigarnik effect and anxiety disorder in 44 young adults with intellectual disabilities. The participants were segregated into “anxious” and “non-anxious” groups. The Glasgow Anxiety Scale for people with an Intellectual Disability (Mindham & Espie, 2003) and a series of 20 brief tasks (similar to the concept of Zeigarnik’s work) were administered. The results revealed that only “non-anxious” participants exhibited the selective recall pattern. It was hypothesized that interrupted activities created negative performance expectations, causing cognitive distress. It was assumed that the fear of failure, nervousness and physical discomfort, which are fundamental parts of anxiety, were particularly threatening to “anxious” participants, resulting in selective forgetting or selective storage of solutions. The findings are discussed emphasizing the role of psychopathological factors in the performance of individuals with intellectual disabilities.

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In-Text Citation: (Alevriadou, 2016)
To Cite this Article: Alevriadou, A. (2016). Adults with intellectual disabilities with and without anxiety disorder: the Zeigarnik effect paradigm revisited. Multilingual Academic Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 4(1), 1–10.

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Adults with Intellectual Disabilities with And without Anxiety Disorder: The Zeigarnik Effect Paradigm Revisited

Anastasia Alevriadou

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