The effects of anxiety on the perception of word phrases

This study was designed to determine if anxiety in intermediate grade school children would influence their perceptual reading pattern of word phrases. The 107 fifth- and sixth-grade students had phrase reading scores significantly associated with age, sex, and grade level in the expected direction. Higher anxiety scores significantly limited student perception among 3-, 4-, and 5-word length phrases (r's from ?.37 to ?.40, p < .01). Anxiety test data increased by 10 to 13% the amount of predictive variance accounted for beyond predictions obtained established by age, sex, and grade level in combination (p < .01). R's ranged from .56 to .58.