The effects of diazepam and oxprenolol on short term memory in individuals of high and low state anxiety.

1 The effect of oral doses of diazepam (5 mg) and oxprenolol (80 mg) on short term memory of normal individuals stratified for 'state' anxiety levels has been investigated. 2 Normal student volunteers were stratified into high and low anxiety groups on the basis of responses to the Spielberger 'A-state' scale. Subjects were then randomly administered active drug or placebo and given a form of running memory test performed under a variety of conditions in which variable rate of item presentation and articulatory suppression were used. 3 Diazepam significantly reduced the errors of recall in the running memory test in the high anxiety group and produced a distinct separation of response from the low anxiety group under the test conditions of slow item presentation with articulatory suppression. Oxprenolol had no effect on the short term memory test in either high or low anxiety groups in any experimental test situation. 4 These results are compared to previous work in which generally a deleterious effect of diazepam on short term memory in normal volunteers has been reported. The implications of these findings are further discussed in relationship to possible models of memory function.