THE CHOICE OF TASKS BY HIGH-ANXIETY AND L OW-ANXIETY CHILDREN AFTER SUCCESS OR FAILURE IN A COMPUTER GAME

The aim of the experiment was to determine to which degree anxiety alr eady has an effect on the performance of children in the pre-school pe riod. In the present paper the children's achievement level is underst ood and defined as the task-orientation which is chosen after an induc ed experience or success or failure in a manipulated computer game, al lowing a comparison between rather anxious and less anxious children. In an experiment with 79 children (40 girls, 39 boys, mean age: 3;4-6; 9) it was shown that the children reacted differently depending on the mock feed-back they received about their achievement: if successful, they chose a more difficult task; if not successful, they chose a less difficult task. As expected, success was a positive experience and fa ilure a negative experience for the children. Only in connection with the experienced success or failure in a task did the degree of anxiety show a specific effect on the task selection: when experiencing failu re extremely anxious children used a strategy of task selection which, from an information psychology point of view, was unfavorable for the evaluation of their own competence, i.e. they chose tasks which were either too difficult or too easy.