Some relationships between test anxiety, presence or absence of male persons, and boys' performance on a repetitive motor task

The experiments were conducted to investigate effects of the presence or absence of fathers, male teachers, peers, and strange male adults on the performance of third- and fourth-grade elementary school boys who differed in levels of test anxiety. In each experiment S performed a marble-dropping task for a baseline minute. During the following 5 minutes different variations were introduced in the three experiments. In the first experiment, S's father or male teacher entered and remained in the experimental room in two of the three treatments, while nobody other than E and S were present in the third condition. A fourth treatment was introduced into Exp. II: a male peer of S entered and remained in the experimental room. In the third experiment, S's male teacher or a strange male adult entered and remained in the room in two of the treatment , while only E and S were present in the other condition. It was found that low test-anxious boys showed response increments when any of these persons entered and stayed in the experimental room, while the presence of fathers or male teachers resulted in response decrements in high test anxious boys. Conversely when only E and S were present, low test-anxious Ss showed response decrements, while high test anxious Ss showed response increments under these conditions.