Integrated speaking test tasks (integrated tasks) offer textual and/or aural input for test takers on which to base their subsequent oral responses. This path-analytic study modeled the relationship between test anxiety and the performance of such tasks and explored whether test anxiety would differentially affect the performance of independent…

Anxiety alters how we perceive the world and can alter aspects of cognitive performance. Prominent theories of anxiety suggest that the effect of anxiety on cognition is due to anxious thoughts "overloading" limited cognitive resources, competing with other processes. If this is so, then a cognitive load manipulation should impact…

Research looking specifically at the performance anxiety levels of undergraduate music education majors is sparse. In one of the few studies that examined this issue, Conway, Eros, Pellegrino, and West (2010) found that the different emphases placed on music education majors made for a wider array of activities and foci. Undergraduates who focus…

Comparison shopping is good financial practice, but situations involving numbers and computations are challenging for consumers with math anxiety. We asked North Americans (N = 256) to select the better deal between two products differing in volume and price. As predicted, math anxiety was negatively related to performance on this Price Comparison…

Purpose: Verbal fluency, a task frequently employed in neuropsychological assessment, provides important word productivity data but little information about subjective effort associated with demand monitoring and resource allocation. In two experiments, this study investigated the effects of task variables (semantic vs. phonemic cues; alternating…

Meal preparation assessments conducted in clinical environments (such as rehabilitation settings) might not reflect frail patients' performance at home. In addition, factors that may explain differences in performance between settings remain unknown. The aim of this study was to compare home and clinic performance on meal preparation tasks in…

This study investigated the relationship of two anxiety measures (the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait Form and the S-R Inventory of Anxiousness-Exam Form) to performance on a visual concept-learning task with embedded criterial information. The effect on anxiety reduction of cueing criterial information was also examined, and two levels of…

According to stereotype threat theory, the prospect of being judged in terms of a negative stereotype triggers underperformance (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995). Targets need not personally subscribe to the negative stereotype to be affected but must simply be aware that others may subscribe to it. The goal of this study was to…

This study explored the relationships among language proficiency, two selected test-taker characteristics (i.e., topical knowledge and anxiety), and integrated speaking test performance. Data collection capitalized on three sets of instruments: three integrated tasks derived from TOEFL-iBT preparation materials, the state anxiety inventory created…

This study examined the relationship between perfectionism, anxiety (i.e., emotional state anxiety, personality trait anxiety, inhibitory anxiety, prospective anxiety, sensitivity to reward, sensitivity to punishment), parenting styles (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, permissive), GPA (measured by self-report responses), and SES (measured as…

This research sought to replicate and extend work suggesting that coloring can reduce anxiety, asking whether coloring can improve cognitive performance. In 2 experiments, undergraduates (N = 47, N = 52) colored and participated in a control condition. Subjective and performance measures of mood and mindfulness were included: an implicit mood test…

This study investigates the correlates of statistics anxiety. Considering that statistics anxiety and spatial anxiety have been separately correlated with related constructs (e.g., mathematics anxiety, academic performance, etc.), the possibility that spatial anxiety plays a role in statistics anxiety is explored. When facing statistics or…

This study examines the influence of trait anxiety on working memory (WM) in safety and threat. Interactions between experimentally induced anxiety and WM performance (on different cognitive loads) have been reported in healthy, nonanxious subjects. Differences in trait anxiety may moderate these interactions. Accordingly, these interactions may…

Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Model makes a theoretical distinction between the contribution of dispositional anxiety and the transitory experience of anxiety to performance difficulties during testing situations. According to the State-Trait framework, state anxiety is viewed as the primary performance barrier for test-anxious students, and…

Previous studies revealed inconsistent findings about the effects of cognitively low or high demanding interpolated tasks during incubation period on post-incubation creative performance. To explain this contradiction, two intervention tasks were administered (Reflecting on the generated ideas [RF] and the Word puzzle task [WP]), which are…