SELECTIVE INFLUENCE OF TEST ANXIETY ON READING PROCESSES

The aim of this research is to explore whether comprehension is impair ed by test anxiety, whether the anxious person spends compensatory rea ding time, and which cognitive processes arc affected. High- and low-a nxiety students read texts word by word with the moving-window techniq ue under test conditions. Multiple regression analyses on word-reading times were computed with a number of psycholinguistic variables-assum ed to map onto specific processes-serving as predictors. Results indic ated that anxiety did not impair comprehension, but increased word-rea ding times, which were affected interactively by anxiety and specific psycholinguistic variables (end of clause, serial position within the text, narrativity, and summary). These data reveal that anxious reader s need to employ a greater amount of processing resources than their n on-anxious counterparts to obtain a similar comprehension level. Furth ermore, the interactive effects suggest that anxiety is selectively de trimental to the efficiency of text-level processes, such as those inv olved in integrating information across sentences. In contrast, anxiet y docs not impair low-level processes, such as encoding and lexical ac cess.