Age differences in self-reported anxiety and psychomotor performance

10 young and 10 older adults completed a self-report questionnaire on Debilitative and Facilitative Anxiety both prior to and following 10 psychomotor coding trials. Older adults were higher on Facilitative Anxiety at both times. These scores were negatively correlated with coding task performance for the total group but not for the individual age groups. There was no age effect for Debilitative Anxiety, although it was lower at Time 2, particularly for older adults. Debilitative Anxiety was not correlated with psychomotor performance. These results do not support the hypothesis that the psychomotor performance of older adults is differentially negatively affected by anxiety.