Anxiety and depression are linked to lower academic performance. It is proposed that academic performance is reduced in young people with high levels of anxiety or depression as a function of increased test-specific worry that impinges on working memory central executive processes. Participants were typically developing children (12 to 13-years-old) from two UK schools. The study investigated the relationship between negative affect, worry, working memory, and academic performance using self-report questionnaires, school administered academic test data, and a battery of computerized working memory tasks. Higher levels of anxiety and depression were associated with lower academic performance. There was support for a mediation hypothesis, where worry and central executive processes mediated the link between negative affect and academic performance. Further studies should test these hypotheses in larger longitudinal samples. Implications for school psychology practice and interventions in schools are discussed.

Working memory skills are positively associated with academic performance. In contrast, high levels of trait anxiety are linked with educational underachievement. Based on Eysenck and Calvo's (1992) processing efficiency theory (PET), the present study investigated whether associations between anxiety and educational achievement were mediated via poor working memory performance. Fifty children aged 11-12 years completed verbal (backwards digit span; tapping the phonological store/central executive) and spatial (Corsi blocks; tapping the visuospatial sketchpad/central executive) working memory tasks. Trait anxiety was measured using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Academic performance was assessed using school administered tests of reasoning (Cognitive Abilities Test) and attainment (Standard Assessment Tests). The results showed that the association between trait anxiety and academic performance was significantly mediated by verbal working memory for three of the six academic performance measures (math, quantitative and non-verbal reasoning). Spatial working memory did not significantly mediate the relationship between trait anxiety and academic performance. On average verbal working memory accounted for 51% of the association between trait anxiety and academic performance, while spatial working memory only accounted for 9%. The findings indicate that PET is a useful framework to assess the impact of children's anxiety on educational achievement.

Cognitive interference theories (e.g. attentional control theory, processing efficiency theory) suggest that high levels of trait anxiety predict adverse effects on the performance of cognitive tasks, particularly those that make high demands on cognitive resources. We tested an interaction hypothesis to determine whether a combination of high anxiety and low working memory capacity (WMC) would predict variance in demanding cognitive test scores. Ninety six adolescents (12- to 14-years-old) participated in the study, which measured self-report levels of trait anxiety, working memory, and cognitive test performance. As hypothesized, we found that the anxiety-WMC interaction explained a significant amount of variance in cognitive test performance (ΔR(2) .07, p < .01). Trait anxiety was unrelated to cognitive test performance for those adolescents with average WMC scores (β = .13, p > .10). In contrast, trait anxiety was negatively related to test performance in adolescents with low WMC (β = -.35, p < .05) and positively related to test performance in those with high WMC (β = .49, p < .01). The results of this study suggest that WMC moderates the relationship between anxiety and cognitive test performance and may be a determinant factor in explaining some discrepancies found in the literature. Further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms involved.

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This study examined the extent to which a range of child characteristics (sex, age, socioeconomic status, reading skill and intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation) predicted engagement (i.e., time spent) in different reading activities (fiction books, factual books, school textbooks, comics, magazines and digital texts). In total, 791 children (aged 8–11 years) participated. There was considerable variation in the factors predicting engagement in different reading activities. Although intrinsic reading motivation was a good predictor of recreational book reading, age was a stronger predictor of engagement with digital texts. Furthermore, specific dimensions of motivation predicted engagement in different reading activities; being motivated to read challenging texts predicted recreational book reading, whereas being motivated to achieve good grades predicted schoolbook reading. On the other hand, social reasons predicted engagement with magazines and comics. Implications for education and the relationship between child characteristics and choice of reading activities are discussed.