Modulation of executive attention by threat stimulus in test-anxious students.
The study examined whether test anxiety (TA) is related to impaired attentional networks under emotional distraction. High and low test-anxious students completed a modified version of the attention network test (ANT) in which emotional distracters, specifically threat-related or neutral words, were embedded in centrally presented hollow arrows in Experiment 1. Results showed a significant reduction in efficiency of the executive attention in test-anxious students compared to controls when the fillers were threat/test-related words. To evaluate the effect of the test adaptation, the original ANT, which utilized no emotional distracter, was employed as a control task in Experiment 2. We then consolidated the data on efficiency of attentional networks, which were derived from both tasks. Contrasting the two tasks showed that TA reduced executive attention in the revised task only, suggesting an enhanced sensitivity provided by the adaptation from the original task. Taken together, these findings indicate that the attentional deficit in test-anxious individuals represents a situation-related defect of a single component of attention rather than an underlying structural and universal attentional deficit. The results support the hypothesis of attentional control theory and contribute to the understanding of attentional mechanisms in individuals with TA.
Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing China ; School of Public Administration, Wuhu Institute of Technology, Wuhu China.
Huan
H
Zhang
Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing China ; Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing China ; State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing China ; Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing China.
Renlai
R
Zhou
Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing China.
Jilin
J
Zou
attention network test; emotional distraction; executive attention; modulation; test anxiety