International Journal of Psychology, 2015 Vol. 50, No. 4, 265–271, DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12092
State test-anxiety, selective attention and concentration in university students Antonio Fernández-Castillo and María J. Caurcel Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Granada, Spain
T
he principal aim of this study was to assess the level of selective attention and mental concentration before exams in a sample of university students and to determine a possible relationship between anxiety and reduction of levels of attention in this circumstance. A total of 403 university students, 176 men and 227 women, aged from 18 to 46 years, participated in the study. Of them, 169 were first-year undergraduates, 118 were second to fourth-year undergraduates and 116 were postgraduate Master’s degree students. All of them completed the Spanish version of the Spielberger State-Anxiety Inventory and the D2 Attention Test just before taking an exam. Our results showed that participants with lower levels of anxiety had higher levels of selective attention and mental concentration before the exam. These results specifically indicate that when anxiety levels are very high, this could over-activate the orientating and alerting functions and to reduce the capacity of attentional control. These processes could have a negative impact on specific attentional processes and become a negative influence on performance in exams. Keywords: Test-anxiety; Selective attention; Mental concentration.
Test-anxiety has been studied traditionally as a typology of state-anxiety, which was defined years ago (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 2002) as a transitory emotional condition of an organism that is generated as a result of exposure to a specific situation or stimulus. As such, test-anxiety is just another form of anxiety, characterised, like the other types, by the presence of somatic, cognitive and motor symptomatology (Zhang, Su, Peng, Yang, & Cheng, 2011). The main differential aspect with regard to other typologies of emotional alteration is the situation in which it occurs: before and during evaluation situations (exams) in any area, although more particularly, the academic sphere. In addition, there seem to be other aspects of these episodes that are common to other anxiety situations, such as fear of negative assessment and failure, and the perception of the exam as a threatening situation (Fernández-Castillo, 2013). The presence of certain levels of anxiety is common in this situation, in fact, some studies have found that 35% of university students present an alarming or very alarming level of anxiety during exams (Álvarez, Aguilar, & Lorenzo, 2012), and specific interventions aimed at reducing this emotional alteration in this setting have received
much attention from psychology (von der Embse, Barterian, & Segool, 2013). Concerning possible gender differences in test-anxiety, various studies have shown that women present higher levels of anxiety and more intense symptomatology than men (Eum & Rice, 2011; Szafranski, Barrera, & Norton, 2012), although other studies have found no evidence of significant gender differences (Fernández-Castillo, 2013). With regard to participants’ age and educational level, according to some authors, anxiety is not associated with subjects’ age, but a higher educational level has been found to be associated with lower levels of anxiety (Gass & Curiel, 2011). Recent general research of the association between anxiety and other emotional alterations, behavioural habits, and consequences on cognitive functioning has become an interesting line of research in psychology (Fernández-Castillo, 2009, 2013; Mathews & MacLeod, 2005). It has even been suggested that anxiety has a negative consequences in cognitive performance (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007). Numerous studies have investigated diverse aspects of intellectual performance that could become deteriorated due to the
Correspondence should be addressed to Antonio Fernández-Castillo, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Campus de Cartuja S/n, 18071 Granada, Spain. (E-mail:
[email protected]).
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presence of anxiety (Gass & Curiel, 2011), especially because these effects could have a great impact on students’ results in academic exams. Among the variables of cognitive functioning that have been studied, anxiety seems to have a negative effect on the performance of functions such as the working memory applied to mathematical tasks, numerical sequencing or the attentional aspects involved in these processes, such as concentration or sustained attention (Gass & Curiel, 2011). This has generated some controversy, and the relation among these variables deserves more attention from researchers, as much is still unknown about the functioning of the variables involved in the directionality of the effects of anxiety (Putwain, Connors, & Symes, 2010). Thus, for some time, one of the variables that have increasingly gained researchers’ interest is attention and its possible deterioration in the presence of anxiety. Anxiety could have an effect on attention, which is no longer considered a unitary process, especially since the emergence of the latest theoretical models and taking into account the recent delimitations of the concept of attention and its dimensions. Whereas some theoretical models have identified three processes or attentional networks: alerting, orienting and executive control (Posner, Rueda, & Kanske, 2007), other theoretical positions have differentiated selective attention and concentration capacity as the two central elements of general attention (Brickenkamp & Seisdedos, 2009). According to Posner et al. (2007), the alerting network is responsible for maintaining an adequate level of sensitivity for perception and stimulus processing. The orienting network is involved in the selection of relevant information from a complex sensory stimulus set, and the executive control network is responsible for voluntary control of action. The latter two dimensions present some similarities with what other authors (Brickenkamp & Seisdedos, 2009) denominate, respectively, selective attention and concentration. Selective attention has been conceptualised as the capacity to focus on one or two important stimuli, while deliberately suppressing the awareness of other distractor stimuli (Jiménez et al., 2012). It has been defined too as a cognitive mechanism with two dimensions: On the one hand, the ability of focusing specifically on certain aspects of the environment or in the answers that have to be execute (targeting), and on the other hand, the proficiency of ignoring certain information or inhibit certain types of responses (Sánchez, 2011). Concentration is defined as the ability to maintain sustained attention on a task during a certain time. It is the activity that keeps the attentional focus and being alert to the presence of certain stimuli or tasks over relatively long periods of time. This activity requires an effort by the subject, so a progressive deterioration of its performance occurs over time (Sánchez, 2011).
Researchers have found that when levels of state-anxiety are high, over-activation of the orientating and alerting functions can be observed. More specifically, high anxiety has been associated with the presence of bias in selective attention due to the reduced capacity of attentional control (Pacheco-Unguetti, Acosta, Lupianez, Roman, & Derakshan, 2012). According to other proposals, the same results have been found associating anxiety with attentional failures (Putwain, Langdale, Woods, & Nicholson, 2011; Shechner et al., 2012), and in a similar vein, it has been reported in samples of youths that the presence of anxiety problems correlates with errors in selective attention and other cognitive errors (Watts & Weems, 2006). Concerning gender, there seem to be no differences between male and female students in attentional functioning or attentional deficit (Fernández-Castillo & Gutiérrez-Rojas, 2009). It seems clear that anxiety modulates the functioning of attention (Pacheco-Unguetti et al., 2012). However, although numerous investigations have centred on the role that anxiety plays during exams, not many have gone into the relationship between test-anxiety and lack of attention in that situation. Along the same lines, some authors have associated test-anxiety with heightened susceptibility to distraction and, although test-anxiety, as a typology of state-anxiety, could evidently be associated with attentional bias in this situation (Keogh, Bond, French, Richards, & Davis, 2004; Putwain et al., 2011), much remains to be discovered about the specific mechanisms and attentional dimensions involved. Considering all the above, in the present work, our first objective is to assess selective attention and mental concentration levels just before taking an exam in a sample of university students and to determine a possible relationship between anxiety and educational and attentional levels. Secondly, we examine possible gender and age differences and differences due to educational level in attentional levels before a test situation. Thirdly, we seek to determine whether different levels of anxiety can be related to different levels of reduction of attention. In accordance with the literature reviewed, our working hypotheses led us to expect, firstly, that higher levels of anxiety would be associated with a tendency towards lower levels of attention before the test and that students with a lower educational level (first-year undergraduate students) would present higher levels of anxiety compared with those with a higher educational level (fourth-year undergraduate students and postgraduates) (Hypothesis 1). Secondly, no significant differences were expected between men and women in attentional functioning (Hypothesis 2). Thirdly, we expected to find differences in attention as a function of educational level, so that participants with a higher educational level would have better levels of attentional functioning (Hypothesis 3). Lastly, we expected to find that higher levels of anxiety © 2014 International Union of Psychological Science
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would be specifically associated with lower results, both in selective attention and in concentration (Hypothesis 4). METHOD Sample In this study, participants were 403 students, aged from 18 to 46 years (M = 21.04, SD = 3.45). Of them, 176 were men (43.7%) and 227 were women (56.3%). All participants attended university studies at the University of Granada (Spain) in the specialties of Educational Sciences, Physical Education and Social Work. Of them, 169 students (41.9%) were aged between 18 and 19 years (corresponding to first-year undergraduates), 118 (29.3%) were aged 19–22 years (second- to fourth-year undergraduates), and 116 (28.8%) were aged 22 or older (postgraduate Master’s degree students). All of them participated in the study just before taking a final test. The initial sample of students was composed of 424 subjects. Of these, 21 (4.95%) declined to participate. Cases that did not match the age-group criteria (e.g., students over 19 years of age who were first-year undergraduate students, etc.) were excluded. Instruments Anxiety level was assessed with the latest Spanish version of the State-Trait-Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 2002). This inventory was designed to measure both state-anxiety and trait-anxiety (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1983), but in this study, we only used the State-Anxiety Scale in order to measure anxiety in a particular situation. This form contains 20 items, each of which is rated on a 4-point scale, ranging from 0 (nothing) to 3 (a lot), being the total score range: 0–60. Although there are specific inventories to assess test-anxiety, in this study we decided to use the STAI. There are two reasons for this; the first is that there are not instruments with such psychometric qualities than STAI validated in Spanish population. The second reason is that the STAI has an excellent convergent validity with specific instruments for assessing test-anxiety and in addition it is an inventory widely used to assess state-anxiety around the world. The convergent validity of the scale with other measures of anxiety was very good (Spielberger, 1977; Spielberger, Gonzalez, Taylor, Algaze, & Anton, 1978). Internal consistency of the Spanish version of the State-Anxiety form in the original study was high: the Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR-20) was between .90 and .93, and split-half reliability was .94 (Spielberger et al., 2002). Internal consistency of the STAI in the present sample was excellent (Cronbach’s α = .90). To assess selective attention and mental concentration, we used the Spanish version (Brickenkamp & Seisdedos, © 2014 International Union of Psychological Science
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2009) of the D2 Attention Test (Brickenkamp, 1962). This is a time-limited test that assesses the ability to attend selectively to relevant aspects of a task while ignoring irrelevant aspects and also the capacity to perform the task quickly, continuously and accurately. This instrument measures these two variables consisting of three components: (a) the speed or amount of stimuli processed per time unit, (b) the degree of accuracy (which is a function of the error rate), and (c) the relationship between speed and accuracy during test performance. Internal stability indices are very high, greater than .90 (Brickenkamp & Seisdedos, 2009). The test has high validity and has been used in many research areas including the educational, clinical, vocational, industrial, etc. The test is made up of 14 lines with 47 characters each. These lines contain the letters d and p, which can appear with one or two small dashes above or below each letter. The task consists of marking every letter d that has two small dashes (both above, both below, or one above and one below). These are considered the relevant elements and all the remaining combinations (all the ps, and the ds with either only one dash or no dashes) are considered irrelevant. There are two application versions of this scale (Brickenkamp & Seisdedos, 2009). In the first one, the evaluator reduces the response time for each line to 15 seconds. In the second version, an overall time of 7 minutes is allowed. In this study, we used the second version and the test was applied collectively. The test provides various scores but in this study, we only used the Total Test Effectiveness (TOT) as an indicator of selective attention and the Concentration Index (CON) as a measure of mental concentration. For TOT, the total score range is 0–658, and for CON the range is from −60 to 269. Additionally, the participants were asked to indicate their age and gender. Procedure Data collection was carried out just before beginning a final exam in diverse subjects (which would provide the final grade in that subject), when the students were already seated in the examination classroom. The test situations were selected randomly in the Faculty of Educational Sciences, the Faculty of Physical Education and the Faculty of Social Work (University of Granada, Spain) and, in all cases, the type of exam was an objective multiple-choice test. In each case, the professor introduced the evaluator to the students and briefly explained the purpose of his/her presence in the exam room, the importance of giving sincere answers, the need to read carefully and understand every item and the anonymous nature of their participation. Students who did not want to complete the questionnaires remained seated at their desks waiting for the start of the examination. All the participants participated voluntarily
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TABLE 1 Descriptive analysis of subjects groups according to selective attention and mental concentration levels Subject group Low selective attention Medium selective attention High selective attention Low mental concentration Medium mental concentration High mental concentration
N
%
35 122 246 23 100 280
8.7 30.3 61 5.7 24.8 69.5
and immediately before beginning an important test. The average duration of questionnaire completion was 20 minutes. RESULTS Regarding our first objective, the initial descriptive analysis shows that, in general selective attention, the students had a mean score of 520.12 (SD = 91.93) with a range of 123–653. In mental concentration, the mean score was 226.29 (SD = 46.88) with a range of 20–298. Using the scoring criteria system of the instrument, the sample was divided into three subgroups: low levels of attention (scores below the 25th percentile), medium levels of attention (scores between the 25th and the 75th percentiles), and high levels of attention (scores above the 75th percentile). The distribution and percentage of subjects in each category are shown in Table 1. As seen in Table 1, these results indicate that 61% of participants had a high or very high level of selective attention, and that 69.5% obtained high or very high scores in mental concentration. Regarding the second part of this objective, the correlational analysis shows a significant association between the variables. Thus, anxiety before the exam was significantly and negatively correlated with general selective attention (r = −.13, p = .00), and with mental concentration (r = −.14, p = .00). Age correlated significantly and negatively with test-anxiety (r = −.21, p = .00), and significantly and positively with selective attention (r = .13, p = .01) and mental concentration (r = .12, p = .01). Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations of the sample in selective attention and mental concentration. No significant differences between males and females
were found in selective attention or in mental concentration. The ANOVA carried out revealed significant differences in general selective attention, F(2, 402) = 9.596, p = .00; Eta-squared (η2 ) = .046, and in mental concentration, F(2, 402) = 10.089, p = .00 (η2 = .048), as a function of educational level (first-year undergraduate students, second- to fourth-year undergraduate students and postgraduates). The results of the minimum significant difference comparison according educational level are shown in Table 3. In order to determine specific differences in selective attention and mental concentration among participants who had different levels of anxiety, first of all, we divided the sample into three groups as a function of anxiety level. These groups were established taking into account that the scale varies according to gender, so we used the appropriate gender-specific criterion. The low-anxiety group included subjects with scores below the 25th percentile (in males: cut-off raw score = 13; in females cut-off = 14), N = 64 subjects (15.9%); the medium-anxiety group was comprised of subjects with scores between the 25th and 75th percentiles (males: cut-off raw score between 14 and 28; females: cut-off between 15 and 31), N = 227 (56.3%); the high-anxiety group of subjects with scores above the 75th percentile (males: cut-off raw score ≥ 29; females: cut-off ≥ 32), N = 112 (27.8%). Next, we carried out an ANOVA the results of which revealed significant differences in general selective attention, F(2, 402) = 5.437, p = .00 (η2 = .022), and mental concentration, F(2, 402) = 4.489, p = .01 (η2 = .016), as a function of anxiety level, showing that participants with lower levels of anxiety had higher levels of selective attention and mental concentration. Table 4 presents the multiple comparison MSD test with differences between the low-anxiety level and the remaining levels (medium and high anxiety). DISCUSSION The potential impact of test-anxiety on selective attention and mental concentration before exams is an important issue that has received relatively little research attention. In this investigation, we intended to explore the levels of attention and the possible relationship between anxiety, age and level of concentration.
TABLE 2 t-Test results in selective attention and mental concentration according to sex Males (N = 176)
Females (N = 227)
Attention dimension
M
SD
M
SD
t-Value
Selective attention Mental concentration
522.78 225.41
97.11 48.68
518.05 226.96
87.87 45.53
t(401) = .51, p = .61 t(401) = .33, p = .74
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TABLE 3 Minimum significant difference (MSD) post hoc comparison results as a function of educational level Attention dimension Selective attention
Mental concentration
Educational level
N
M
SD
Comparisons
Mean difference (SE)
G1 G2 G3 G1 G2 G3
169 118 116 169 118 116
512.50 501.49 550.17 224.21 214.64 241.16
88.81 100.83 79.50 45.65 52.32 38.52
G1 > G2 G1 < G3* G2 < G3* G1 > G2 G1 < G3* G2 < G3*
11.01 (10.80) 37.68 (10.85) 48.68 (11.77) 9.57 (5.50) 16.96 (5.53) 26.53 (6.00)
Note: G1 = 1st course undergraduate students; G2 = 2nd to 4th course undergraduate students; G3 = postgraduate Master’s degree students. *p < .001. TABLE 4 Post hoc MSD comparison results as a function of anxiety level Attention dimension
Anxiety level
Selective attention
Low anxiety (LA) Medium anxiety (MA) High anxiety (HA) Low anxiety (LA) Medium anxiety (MA) High anxiety (HA)
Mental concentration
N
M
SD
Comparisons
Mean difference (SE)
64 227 112 64 227 112
554.02 515.62 509.87 241.64 224.84 220.44
83.59 90.51 95.65 42.38 45.20 51.04
LA > MA* LA > HA* MA > HA LA > MA* LA > HA* MA > HA
38.40 (12.87) 44.15 (14.25) 5.76 (10.50) 16.80 (6.58) 21.20 (7.28) 4.40 (5.37)
*p < .001.
The results indicate that, firstly, students’ levels of attention are in general fairly high, although a small percentage presented low levels both of selective attention and concentration. This result is logical when taking into account that participants were about to take an exam in the form of an objective multiple-choice test. The results show that high levels of anxiety are associated with a tendency towards worse scores in selective attention and concentration. This result, which was expressed in our first hypothesis, is coherent with prior research showing deterioration in diverse cognitive functions when levels of anxiety are high or very high (Gass & Curiel, 2011; Keogh et al., 2004; Pacheco-Unguetti et al., 2012). The initial analysis also shows that rates of anxiety decrease with age, and the results in both the variables of attentional functioning considered herein improved, which also coincides with our first working hypothesis. The descriptive results shows that 84.1% of the participants presented medium or high levels of anxiety, and nearly 28% of the participants presented very high levels of anxiety, which could be considered clinical or pathological in that situation. Other studies (Álvarez et al., 2012) have found similar or not much higher percentages of participants with high levels of test-anxiety. Regarding our second objective as stated in our second hypothesis, we found no gender differences in attention before a test situation. This result agrees with other previous results that had observed no gender differences in students’ results on attention tests (Fernández-Castillo & Gutiérrez-Rojas, 2009). It was interesting to observe how differences in selective attention and mental concentration were significant as a function of age and © 2014 International Union of Psychological Science
educational level, with Master’s degree students showing greater selective attention and concentration compared with undergraduate students, which is consistent with our third hypothesis. This result is consistent with other studies finding that a higher educational level is associated with lower levels of anxiety (Gass & Curiel, 2011) and therefore, with better cognitive performance. An explanation of this result is that older students with a higher educational level have more experience and better coping strategies for test-anxiety, or they may find the test situation less threatening. However, these assumptions need to be studied in more detail in future studies using larger samples to allow a developmental analysis and that includes children and adolescents, especially if we consider the complex nature of coping strategies (Davis, DiStefano, & Schutz, 2008). Lastly, regarding our third objective, we found that high levels of anxiety are related to lower levels of selective attention and mental concentration. Our results reveal significant differences between low-anxiety groups and medium- and high-anxiety groups. These results indicate that, as of certain medium levels of anxiety, both attentional dimensions studied deteriorate, but as of medium-high levels, the levels of deterioration of selective attention and of concentration do not vary. Other studies had indicated this tendency too (Keogh et al., 2004; Putwain et al., 2011). This result is coherent with other studies indicating that higher levels of anxiety could be associated with deterioration of cognitive performance such as, for example, working memory (Gass & Curiel, 2011). Also in accordance with these authors, an explanation of this effect is
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that test-anxiety is associated with intrusive thoughts that are a source of distraction. The effect of this relation does not seem to be very intense because the attentional deficit observed is not excessive, but this should be examined in future research with samples undergoing a high level of anxiety (which apparently was not our case). A limitation of this study that should be taken into account is the instrument used to assess state-anxiety in a test situation, as it is not an instrument specifically designed for this purpose. We emphasise that although diverse specific scales have been designed worldwide to assess test-anxiety (Bedewy & Gabriel, 2013), not many of them are available in Spanish that are adapted to the Spanish population. We therefore decided to use a scale with high reliability and validity indexes such as the STAI, which is extensively used and well known worldwide. Another limitation implies that the results and conclusions of our study should be interpreted with caution because it is a purely correlational study. In the same way the small effect sizes obtained in the ANOVAs implies that our results should be studied in deep again in future investigations considering other variables like trait-anxiety and others. It would be interesting for future studies to consider trait-anxiety because it can be a potentially interesting and involved variable. The assessment before an exam may be an issue that would affect the measured variable itself (anxiety before the exam). This aspect must be considered in the methodological approach in future studies which could consider shorter and/or alternative assessment systems of anxiety not based on self-report. Future investigations could also examine the effects of anxiety in another type of examination procedures and not just in multiple-choice test type. The presence of test-anxiety is especially concerning due to its possible impact on students’ performance in tests, although there is some controversy about this. In fact, anxiety is not necessarily associated in general and in principle with worse test performance or with worse academic results (Fernández-Castillo & Gutiérrez-Rojas, 2009). It has even been ensured that an adequate level of arousal is necessary for optimal performance of intellectual tasks (Brand & Schoonheim-Klein, 2009). Our results not only support this possibility, but also indicate specifically that when levels of anxiety are very high, this could have a negative impact on specific attentional processes. Some programmes or brief intervention initiatives aimed to reduce anxiety at examination could be interesting and could improve attentional processes and even cognitive performance of students. For example, it may be interesting relaxation programmes, control of anxiety symptoms or attentional promotion and training before and during the exams (Serrano, Sánchez-Mateos, & Escolar, 2010).
Future research should study more precise explanatory models in more depth as well as focus on the impact of this association on students’ performance in exams. Manuscript received April 2014 Revised manuscript accepted June 2014 First published online August 2014
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