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Reallocation of attention under test anxietyстатья
- Авторы: Kapitsa M.S., Blinnikova I.V.
- Сборник: Fechner Day 2016 -- Proceedings of the 32st Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics
- Год издания: 2016
- Место издания: Институт психологии РАН Москва
- Первая страница: 74
- Последняя страница: 76
- Аннотация: The study analyzed the nature of the redistribution of attention under the influence of test anxiety. The study investigated test anxiety as a special case of general anxiety. The fact that anxiety significantly affects the processes of attention has been repeatedly confirmed2,4. K. Goldstein believes that anxiety leads to a loss of attention and a loss of clearly perceived external object3. J.Easterbrook expresses a more specific assumption. He admits that test anxiety and related emotional activity narrows the attention field. This is why people experiencing this condition do not notice relevant information and fail to efficiently solve the problem1. We tried to clarify the following question: what happens to attention in a situation of test anxiety - whether it narrows or expands. 44 subjects (28 women and 16 men, average age 21) participated in the experiment. 22 subjects were included in experimental group, the others – in control group. The groups were equivalent in age and sex. The subjects performed first preliminary, then the main sequence of cognitive tasks on the computer in the course of one hour. The sequence included a test task presented right after the main instruction. We used as a test an “attention span” task, in which the subjects were asked to reproduce the spatial location of dots as quickly as possible using the keyboard. Matrices 3 x 3 with stimuli (dots) were successively presented on the display, each one for 200 ms. The layout of the dots was randomly produced in each trial. The experimental session consisted of four series, each with 10 trials. The first series featured 3 dots, the second one 4 dots, the third one 5 dots, the forth one 6 dots. Latent response time, accuracy and dispersion of responses on the average at the matrix and for each cell of the matrix were recorded. The control group got neutral instruction which generated moderate operational tension. The other participants were told that their intellectual abilities would be tested; this instruction provoked emotional tension which was accentuated by negative feedback given between sessions. At the beginning and at the end of the test series the subjects filled in questionnaires allowing to assess the level of anxiety. The results of the experiment demonstrate the impact of test-anxiety on the speed of cognitive performance and the reorganization of attention in the process of reproducing spatial configurations. The “stressed subjects” spent more time for cognitive processing of stimuli which resulted in slower answers. The two groups of subjects differed radically in reaction times. This difference was 112.25 ms which can be defined as “cost of anxiety”. There was no significant difference between the groups either in the percentage of correct responses or in the indicators of variability of responses. When the number of elements in the matrix was increased, the reaction time got higher as well. This pattern was evident for both the experimental and control groups. The differences between groups were significant for any number of stimuli. At the next stage of data processing we analyzed the spatial distribution of correct answers across the cells of the matrix. The general trend is that the number of correct answers decreases, following the diagonal from the upper left to the lower right corner. Comparing the results of the distribution of correct answers in the two groups, we can conclude that as test anxiety grows, there is an increase of attention to the left part of the matrix (to the zone of the beginning of reading) and a weakening of attention to the right part of the matrix. These data contradict both the ideas of K. Goldstein and assumptions of J.Easterbrook. It was also demonstrated that test anxiety causes spatial reallocation of attentional resources. References 1. J. A. Easterbrook, Psychol.l Review, 66, 183-201 (1959). 2. M. W. Eysenck, M. G Calvo, Cognition and Emotion, 6, 409-434 (1992). 3. K Goldstein, The organism: A holistic approach to biology (New York: The American Book Co., 1939). 4. A. Wells, G. Matthews, Attention and Emotion: A Clinical Perspective (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2015).
- Добавил в систему: Блинникова Ирина Владимировна