Examinations are perhaps one of the main methods of assessment in education
. Unfortunately, there are some individuals who are so fearful of such even
ts that performance is impaired. Test anxiety is believed to be the trait t
hat predisposes individuals to react negatively to examinations and tests.
One way in which it is believed that rest anxiety affects performance is by
increasing susceptibility to distraction from task-irrelevant material. Ho
wever few studies have directly investigated this impairment. An experiment
was therefore conducted to investigate susceptibility to distraction in hi
gh and low rest-anxious students. The task used was based on one developed
by Mathews. May, Mogg and Eysenck (1990), which distinguishes between focus
ed attention and selective search. In order to determine whether a specific
susceptibility to distraction exists, the distracters were varied in terms
of valence and relevance to examinations. Since test anxiety is a situatio
n-specific trait, art evaluation-related stressor was used to trigger test-
anxious reactions. A specific susceptibility to distraction from threat was
found amongst high test-anxious participants who received the evaluation-r
elated stressor. However this effect was only found when participants were
using focused attention. This suggests that the disturbed performance often
found to be associated with test anxiety might be due to an inability to i
gnore threatening material when attempting to focus attentional resources.
These results are discussed in Eight of current theories of test anxiety an
d implications for educational practice. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & So
ns, Ltd.