The effects of an attentional training procedure on the performance of high and low test-anxious children

Abstract

Children, ages 9 through 12, who were either high or low in test anxiety were matched on sex and grade level, then randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1)attentional training, (2)placebo training, and (3)notraining control. The attentional training group was rewarded for successful inhibition of irrelevant responses and correct attending behavior on a task similar to the Stroop Color Word Test. The placebo training group experienced the same training task but received rewards that were not contingent on inhibition of the irrelevant responses. For the younger children, posttraining assessement on the Stroop test revealed that attentional training enabled high test-anxious children to perform as well as low test-anxious children, while high test-anxious children in the placebo and control groups continued to make more errors than low test-anxious children. This effect did not occur for the older subjects. A second test measuring central-incidental learning was included to test for generalization effects of training, but this task yielded nonsignificant results.