Comorbidity of test anxiety and other anxiety disorders in children.
Elementary school children with clinically significant test anxiety, as determined by self-report and a clinical interview, were assessed for the incidence of other fears and anxiety. The results indicated that test-anxious children reported more fears and general worries than their non-test-anxious peers. As expected, the test-anxious children experienced more negative cognitions and subjective distress when taking a test. Furthermore, the fear of negative evaluation was not limited to an actual test, since these children also reported identical symptoms when engaged in a second social-evaluative task. Finally, 60% of the test-anxious sample met DSM-III criteria for an anxiety disorder. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship of text anxiety to more complex social-evaluative dysfunctions, more pervasive anxiety conditions, DSM-III anxiety disorders, and the utility of test anxiety as an indicator of the presence of these more pervasive anxiety states.
Beidel
D C
DC
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania 15213.
Turner
S M
SM
D000124:Achievement; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D001143:Arousal; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011594:Psychometrics; D011599:Psychopathology; D013732:Test Anxiety Scale