Information processing in low- and high-test-anxious children as a function of grade level and verbal labeling.

Abstract

Recently Sarason (1972) and Wine (1971) discussed the negative effects of test anxiety within an attentional framework. Wine suggested that in evaluative situations high-testanxious (HTA) persons divide their attention between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information, for example, self-stimuli such as worry. Sarason focused on HTA subjects' attention to relevant and irrelevant situational cues. In the present research several implications of these attentional theories of test anxiety were investigated.The hypothesis that HTA subjects divide their attention between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information in evaluative situations was assessed by testing low-testanxious (LTA) and HTA children in an incidental learning task under either game or test instructions. We hypothesized that HTA subjects would have higher incidental and lower central learning scores than LTA subjects. Wine's (1971) suggestion that manipulations forcing attention to task-relevant stimuli should improve HTA subjects' performance was tested by requiring half the subjects to label the central stimuli as they were exposed. Labeling was expected to attenuate the performance differences between LTA and HTA subjects.Forty-eight children, 24 males and 24 females, from each of three grade levels were the subjects. The mean ages were 7.6, 9.9, and 11.9 years for the second, fourth, and sixth graders, respectively. Half were HTA and half LTA as determined by their scores on the Test Anxiety Scale for Children. The Requests for reprints and for an extended report of this study should be sent to

Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory.

“…In the studies by Dusek et al (1975Dusek et al ( , 1976, the secondary task stimuli (drawings of household objects) were comparable in salience to the primary task stimuli (drawings of animals) and were presented together. In both studies, participants high in test anxiety had significantly better recall of the secondary task stimuli than those low in test anxiety, with the opposite being the case for recall of the primary task stimuli.…”

Test Anxiety: A Major Educational Problem and What Can Be Done about It

“…High-anxious children also performed less well, and their difficulty staying on task was probably an important reason why. Dusek, Kermis, and Mergler (1975) and Dusek,Mergler,and Kermis (1 976) found that high-anxious children attended less well to the central stimuli in a positionlearning task and thus performed more poorly than low-anxious children. Instead of focusing on the central stimuli, highanxious children were more distracted by the nonessential (or incidental) stimuli in the task.…”

Cognitions of test-anxious children under naturalistic test-taking conditions.

“…Sarason (1972) suggested that a reassuring, task-oriented atmosphere reduced the performance decrements suffered by HA adults. Dusek, Kermis, and Mergler (1975) found that the performance decrements of HA children only appeared when the task was presented as a test and not when the task was presented as a game. These data suggest that the test-taking environment affects the extent to which test anxiety impairs performance.…”