Test Anxiety and Its Effect on the Personality of Students with Learning Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to look for personality variables that characterized young adults with learning disabilities and test anxiety. Fifty-four Israeli adults diagnosed with learning disabilities participated in the study, 24 of them were diagnosed as having test anxiety; 30 did not have test anxiety. The participants completed the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) to validate the diagnosis of test anxiety and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) to assess the different personality profiles. The results showed significant differences between the two groups on 35 out of 68 measures of the MMPI-2. A discriminant-function analysis of the content scales, the supplementary scales, and the Harris-Lingoes scales of the MMPI-2 showed that one measure, College Maladjustment, explained most of the variance. Further analysis assessed the various test anxiety profiles of the two types of test anxiety, “emotionality” and “worry.” The meaning of the results is discussed as a basis for explaining the profile of a student with learning disabilities and test anxiety. DUBI LUFI, Ph.D., is associate professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Emek Yizreel College, Israel. SUSAN OKASHA, Emek Yizreel College, Israel. ARIE COHEN is professor, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Anxiety is probably one of the most researched human traits in recent years. Hundreds of articles have been published on this topic in almost every professional journal. It is common to divide anxiety into two domains: trait anxiety and state anxiety, a classification first made by Spielberger (1972). Trait anxiety is an individual tendency to perceive various situations as dangerous and threatening. State anxiety, in turn, is the perception of an emotional situation as unpleasant accompanied by a physiological reaction connected to the autonomic nervous system. Test anxiety, the focus of this study, is one form of state anxiety. Test Anxiety Test anxiety affects people in every field of life, whenever people of all ages have to be evaluated, assessed, and graded with regard to their abilities, achievements, or interests. Birenbaum and Nasser (1994) claimed that test anxiety has become one of the most disruptive factors in school and other settings where testing is performed. It has been estimated that 30% of all students suffer from various levels of test anxiety (Shaked, 1996). Spielberger (1972) describes test anxious people as follows: In essence, high test-anxious persons are characterized by acquired habits and attitudes that involve Learning Disability Quarterly 176 negative self-perceptions and expectations. These self-deprecating habits and attitudes dispose test-anxious persons to experience fear and heightened physiological activity in situations such as examinations in which they are being evaluated, and influence the manner in which they interpret and respond to events in the environment. (p. 14) Other researchers have defined additional dimensions of test anxiety. For example, Hong (1998) claimed that test anxiety is “a complex multidimensional construct involving cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral reactions to evaluative situations” (p. 51). Sarason (1984) divided test anxiety into the following four dimensions: worry, tension, test-irrelevant thinking, and bodily symptoms. Liebert and Morris (1967) used a two-dimensional conceptualization to define test anxiety as consisting of two major elements: worry and emotionality. Using Liebert and Morris’ (1967) two-dimensional construct, Spielberger and colleagues (1980) constructed their Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI). To date, the TAI remains the most popular measure of test anxiety used in clinical work and research. The TAI constructs of worry and emotionality are defined as follows: (a) “Worry” is cognitive distress connected to the testing situation; it consists of negative performance expectations or worry about the testing situation; and (b) “Emotionality” is the affective dimension; it refers to the physical reactions of students to the testing situation. Examples of such a reaction can be nervousness, fear, and physical discomfort. In theory, these two anxiety facets are independent even though they have fairly high correlations (Deffenbacher, 1980; Morris, Davis, & Hutchings, 1981). The TAI has been widely discussed in the literature (e.g., Benson & Bandalos 1992; Nasser & Takahashi 1996; O’Neil & Fukumura, 1992; Zeidner & Nevo 1992). In her cognitive-attentional theory of test anxiety, Wine (1971, 1982) claimed that the negative influence of test anxiety is due to the fact that test-anxious persons divide their attention between personal variables and variables connected to the task. In contrast, nontest-anxious persons are able to focus their attention more on the task itself. Among test-anxious students these differences lead to a reduced ability to deal with cognitive tasks. Another model explaining the poor performance of test-anxious students is the “deficit in study skills” model (Paulman & Kennelly, 1984; Wittmaier, 1972). This model views the low performance of test-anxious students as stemming from their deficient knowledge of the school material and their awareness that they are not well prepared for the test. Test anxiety reduces the performance of those who experience it (Sarason, 1980). In addition, it causes emotional suffering (BenDov, 1992). A somewhat different viewpoint was presented by Einat (2000), who claimed that severe test anxiety is caused by high personal standards of persons who expect maximum success and are afraid that they cannot meet their own standards. It has been proven that test-anxious students see the test situation as threatening, and often react by worrying and thinking irrelevant thoughts that interfere with effective performance (Liebert & Morris, 1967; Tobias, 1985; Wine, 1982). Additional findings concerning the negative effects of test anxiety on large percentages of those placed in testing situations may be found elsewhere (for a review, see Hembree, 1988; Seipp, 1991). The negative influence of test anxiety on school performance is found already at a young age. For example, Hill and Sarason (1966) reported that highly test-anxious children were two years behind in basic reading and arithmetic skills by the end of elementary school, probably because of the test anxiety they experienced. Plass and Hill (1986) claimed that highanxious children when tested under time pressure often do the tests too quickly which, in turn, results in low grades in standard testing conditions. Others have found that test anxiety is associated with depressed academic performance (Bryan, Sonnefeld, & Grabowski, 1983; Guttman, 1987; Zatz & Chassin, 1985). Learning Disabilities Learning disabilities (LD) affect 2%-10% of the population (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-4th edition; DSM-IV, 1994). Learning disabilities have been investigated extensively in the areas of definition, diagnosis, and treatment. Considerably less attention has been given to the effect of LD on personality structure. Johnson and Blalock (1987) found that adults with LD had difficulties with self-concept and social acceptance. Similarly, various studies have shown that students with LD have a negative self-concept (Write & Stimmel, 1984), poor interpersonal skills (La Greca, 1987), and frail ego structures (Gaddes, 1985). Other studies found various personality deficiencies in children with LD, such as more external locus of control (Bendel, Tollefson, & Fine, 1980; Hallahan, Gajar, Cohen, & Tarver, 1978; Tarnowski & Nay, 1989; Tollefson, Tracy, Johnson, & Borgers, 1979), and higher anxiety levels, withdrawal, depression, low self-esteem, more rejection by others, and fewer social skills (see review by Noel, Hoy, King, Moreland, & Meera, 1992). Thus, it seems that learning disabilities have a lifelong impact on the personality of the children and adults they affect. Only a few studies have used the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) with its Volume 27, Summer 2004 177 various versions to assess test anxiety. When Noel et al. (1992) used the MMPI-2 to investigate the profile of adults with LD, they raised the question of whether there are any specific personality profiles for individuals with learning disabilities. They found that students with LD in two settings – a rehabilitation setting and a university – differed from the normative college population in shortand long-term stress leading to anxiety. In addition, each group of LD individuals had its unique personality characteristics. Turner (1996) found that anxiety measured by the Fears content scale of the MMPI explained significantly measures of immediate and delayed visual memory scores. In contrast, other measures of anxiety did not explain a significant amount of variance in various memory tasks. Similar results were found by Cannon (1999), who discovered that the Social Anxiety scale of the MMPI could predict poor performance on specific logical memory task. Test Anxiety and Learning Disabilities Only a few studies have dealt with the combination of test anxiety and learning disablities. Lancaster, Mellard, and Hoffman (2001) reported that the greatest difficulties of students with LD was test anxiety, along with concentration, distraction, frustration, remembering, and mathematics. Stevens (2001) found that students with LD had higher levels of test anxiety compared to non-LD students. These differences were mainly in test-irrelevant thinking. Different explanations of the connections between test anxiety and LD were found by Swanson and Howell (1996). In a study of 82 adolescents, these researchers noted a significant positive relationship between test anxiety and cognitive interference and a significant negative relationship between test anxiety and study habits. Based on these results, they claimed that cognitive interference was the most powerful predictor of test anxiety. Various studies have attempted to reduce test anxiety among students with LD. For example, Wachelha and Katz (1999) tried to lower test anxiety levels in high school and junior college students with LD. After eight weeks of cognitive behavioral treat-ment their participants demonstrated reduced test anxiety levels and improved study skills and academic self-esteem compared to a control group. Their cognitive-behavioral treatment included progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, self-instruction training, and training in study and test-taking skills. A similar study with college students (Giordano, 2000) found that academic skills training improved study skills but had mixed effects on anxious behaviors and academic performance. In contrast, exposure therapy decreased anxious behaviors and improved academic performance. Despite such far-reaching personality implications, this topic has not been investigated thoroughly enough in the research literature; and despite the popularity of the topic of test anxiety among researchers and the extensive attention given to the topic of learning disability, not much attention has been paid to their combined effect on the personality of those who suffer from them. The purpose of the present study was to explore the personality structure of a specific population of adults who had both LD and test anxiety compared to a population of other adults with LD but no test anxiety.