Waiting in the wings Apprehension, public speaking and performance

Abstract

Inexperienced speakers were tested shortly before they presented colloquium papers at a public forum. Increases in anxiety and arousal were found using subjective and ECG measures. Performance deteriorated in digit span and verbal fluency but not in logical reasoning, tick length or the Stroop test. However, degree of decrement was small and rate of accumulating data slow, suggesting this is not an ideal situation for studying the effects of apprehension on performance.