Test anxiety and direction of attention.

The literature reviewed suggests an attentional interpretation, of the adverse effects which test anxiety has on task performance. During task performance the highly test-anxious person divides his attention between self-relevant and task-relevant variables, in contrast to the low-test-anxious person who focuses his attention more fully on the task. This interpretation was supported by literature from diverse areas suggesting that (a) highly anxious persons are generally more self-preoccupied than are people low in anxiety; (b) the selffocusing tendencies of highly test-anxious persons are activated in testing situations; (c) those situational conditions in which the greatest performance differences occur are ones which elicit the self-focusing tendencies of highly test-anxious subjects, and the task-focusing tendencies of low-anxious subjects; (d) research examining the relationship between anxiety and task variables suggests that anxiety reduces the range of task cues utilized in performance; (e) "worry," an attentionally demanding cognitive activity, is more debilitating of task performance than is autonomic arousal. Treatment and research implications of this attentional interpretation of test anxiety are briefly discussed.