Thought listing and endorsement measures of self-referential thinking in test anxiety

Abstract

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine cognitive reactions of high and low test-anxious subjects while performing a task of extreme difficulty. A sample of 44 subjects (28 females, 16 males) attempted a difficult analogies task and then reported their thoughts during the task. Subjects also completed the Sarason Test Anxiety Scale and several other self-report measures of their cognitive reactions to the task. Thought listings were classified according to their referent (self, task, or unrelated) and their valence (positive, negative, or neutral). Correlational analyses were then performed with the various measures and revealed an association between test anxiety and reports of negative thoughts involving the self. Test anxiety was not related significantly to the number of thoughts involving the task nor to actual performance on the task. However, test-anxious subjects did report more negative expectancies for their performance and greater cognitive interference during the task. Negative self-expectancies were also related to more negative self thoughts, fewer positive self thoughts, and fewer positive task-related thoughts. The results are interpreted as further evidence for both the role of negative self-related cognitions in the experience of test anxiety and the usefulness of unstructured measures in anxiety research.     

Measuring test anxiety in children: Scale development and internal construct validation

Given the increased testing of school-aged children in the United States there is a need for a current and valid scale to measure the effects of test anxiety in children. The domain of children's test anxiety was theorized to be comprised of three dimensions: thoughts, autonomic reactions, and off-task behaviors. Four stages are described in the evolution of the Children's Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS): planning, construction, quantitative evaluation, and validation. A 50-item scale was administered to a development sample (N=230) of children in grades 3–6 to obtain item analysis and reliability estimates which resulted in a refined 30-item scale. The reduced scale was administered to a validation sample (N=261) to obtain construct validity evidence. A three-factor structure fit the data reasonably well. Recommendations for future research with the scale are described.     

The multidimensionality of test anxiety: A test of different models

Abstract

Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test the multidimensional structure of test anxiety. Starting with the traditional two-factor model, it was of interest whether additional dimensions could still be represented by a single higher-order factor of test anxiety or whether the additional dimensions represented correlates of test anxiety. The Revised Test Anxiety (RTA) scale and the German Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI-G) were combined collecting data from a binational sample of 218 American and 218 German university students. Considering the statistical and theoretical aspects of model fit, they indicated that a model consisting of three primary factors (worry, emotionality, and lack of confidence) fit the data best. While distraction and self-efficacy may be regarded as correlates of test anxiety, lack of confidence was substantiated as a component of test anxiety. Implications for the conceptualization of the content domain and hence area of test anxiety were discussed.     

Beyond test anxiety: Development and validation of the test emotions questionnaire (TEQ)

Measures of test emotions other than test anxiety are lacking. In a series of six studies, we developed a multi-scale questionnaire assessing test-related joy, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, shame, and hopelessness (Test Emotions Questionnaire, TEQ). Consisting of subscales measuring affective, cognitive, physiological, and motivational emotion components, the scales can be used to identify both trait and state test emotions, and are available in German- and English-language versions. Using a rational-empirical strategy of test construction, we first developed theoretical models of the component structures, antecedents, and effects of different test emotions. We then conducted two exploratory, qualitative studies on the occurrence and structures of these emotions. Finally, based on theory and our exploratory data, we constructed, analyzed, and revised the scales of the TEQ in four quantitative studies. Findings of correlational and confirmatory factor analysis indicate that the scales are reliable, structurally valid in terms of representing different test emotions and components within emotions, and externally valid in terms of correlating significantly with personality, learning, academic achievement, and perceived health problems. Many of these correlations proved to be stronger for test emotions other than anxiety, implying that test anxiety is neither the only relevant test emotion, nor necessarily the most important one.     

Attention shifts or volatile representations: What causes binding deficits in visual working memory?

The current study tested two hypotheses of feature binding memory: The attention hypothesis, which suggests that attention is needed to maintain feature bindings in visual working memory (VWM) and the volatile representation hypothesis, which suggests that feature bindings in memory are volatile and easily overwritten, but do not require sustained attention. Experiment 1 tested the attention hypothesis by measuring shifts of overt attention during the study array of a change detection task; serial shifts of attention did not disrupt feature bindings. Experiments 2 and 3 encouraged encoding of more volatile (Experiment 2) or durable (Experiment 3) representations during the study array. Binding change detection performance was impaired in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 3, suggesting that binding performance is impaired when encoding supports a less durable memory representation. Together, these results suggest that although feature bindings may be volatile and easily overwritten, attention is not required to maintain feature bindings in VWM.     

Book Review

Repetition priming is one of the most robust phenomena in cognitive psychology, but participants vary substantially on the amount of priming that they produce. The current experiments assessed the reliability of repetition priming within individuals. The results suggest that observed differences in the size of the repetition priming effect across participants are largely reliable and result primarily from systematic processes. We conclude that the unreliability of semantic priming observed by Stolz, Besner, and Carr (2005) is specific to uncoordinated processes in semantic memory, and that this unreliability does not generalize to other processes in visual word recognition. We consider the implications of these results for theories of automatic and controlled processes that contribute to priming. Finally, we emphasize the importance of reliability for researchers who use similar paradigms to study individual and group differences in cognition.     

Active suppression of distractors that match the contents of visual working memory

The biased competition theory proposes that items matching the contents of visual working memory will automatically have an advantage in the competition for attention. However, evidence for an automatic effect has been mixed, perhaps because the memory-driven attentional bias can be overcome by top-down suppression. To test this hypothesis, the Pd component of the event-related potential waveform was used as a marker of attentional suppression. While observers maintained a colour in working memory, task-irrelevant probe arrays were presented that contained an item matching the colour being held in memory. We found that the memory-matching probe elicited a Pd component, indicating that it was being actively suppressed. This result suggests that sensory inputs matching the information being held in visual working memory are automatically detected and generate an “attend-to-me” signal, but this signal can be overridden by an active suppression mechanism to prevent the actual capture of attention.     

Limitations of perceptual segmentation on contextual cueing in visual search

In visual search, detection of a target in a repeated layout is faster than search within a novel arrangement, demonstrating that contextual invariances can implicitly guide attention to the target location (“contextual cueing”; Chun & Jiang, 1998). Here, we investigated how display segmentation processes influence contextual cueing. Seven experiments showed that grouping by colour and by size can considerably reduce contextual cueing. However, selectively attending to a relevant subgroup of items (that contains the target) preserved context-based learning effects. Finally, the reduction of contextual cueing by means of grouping affected both the latent learning and the recall of display layouts. In sum, all experiments show an influence of grouping on contextual cueing. This influence is larger for variations of spatial (as compared to surface) features and is consistent with the view that learning of contextual relations critically interferes with processes that segment a display into segregated groups of items.     

Eye movements across viewpoint changes in multiple object tracking

Observers can visually track multiple objects that move independently even if the scene containing the moving objects is rotated in a smooth way. Abrupt scene rotations yield tracking more difficult but not impossible. For nonrotated, stable dynamic displays, the strategy of looking at the targets' centroid has been shown to be of importance for visual tracking. But which factors determine successful visual tracking in a nonstable dynamic display? We report two eye tracking experiments that present evidence for centroid looking. Across abrupt viewpoint changes, gaze on the centroid is more stable than gaze on targets indicating a process of realigning targets as a group. Further, we show that the relative importance of centroid looking increases with object speed.     

Flexibility over automaticity: Separable representations for colours and words

This study demonstrates that associations between colour words and the colours they denote are not mandatory. Experiments 1–3 used a go/no-go task in which participants responded to one print colour and one word and withheld response from another print colour and another word. In Experiment 1, the content of the words denoted noncolour entities. In Experiment 2 the two words denoted two colours that were different from the target print colours. In Experiment 3, the words denoted the same colours as the target print colours but each response set included incompatible print colour and word (e.g., one response to the print colour blue and the word “green” and another response to the print colour green and the word “blue”). Participants performed equally well in all the experiments. Experiment 4a used Arabic digits and words denoting numbers, two formats that are known to have shared representations. Here, participants had difficulties separating their responses to the digits and words. These results suggest that representations of words are distinct from the content that they represent, supporting the existence of distinct verbal and colour modules.