Emotional experiences during test taking: Does cognitive ability make a difference?

Examining different motivational patterns in individualized learning

Past research on situated expectancy-value theory has regularly provided evidence of different motivational patterns indicating that not only can students be characterized by different levels of motivation (e.g., low vs. high), but also by divergent profiles (e.g., high success expectancies, low task values). This person-oriented two-wave study (a) identified and compared the motivational patterns of secondary school students from different learning environments (i.e., Student-Centered Learning vs. Teacher-Directed Learning), (b) analyzed the stability of and changes to these patterns during a school year, and (c) examined whether achievement-related choices and performance predicted the pattern changes. Using data from German secondary school students (T1: N = 1153; M = 13.97 years, SD = 1.37; 49% girls) multigroup latent transition analysis revealed four different motivational patterns, including a (a) High Motivational pattern, (b) Medium Motivational pattern, (c) Low Motivational pattern, and (d) Highly Confident/Hardly Interested pattern. The distribution of these patterns differed significantly between students from Student-Centered-Learning and Teacher-Directed-Learning environments. Approximately 47% of students in Teacher-Directed Learning were in the low motivational class whereas the Student-Centered Learning environment exhibited approximately half of that number. The extremely stable nature of these classes highlights the strong relevance of the educational context for student motivation and supports situated expectancy-value theory.

Does anxiety explain why math-anxious people underperform in math?

Math-anxious people consistently underperform in math. The most widely accepted explanation for why this underperformance occurs is that math-anxious people experience heightened anxiety when faced with math, and this in-the-moment anxiety interferes with performance. Surprisingly, this explanation has not been tested directly. Here, using both self-report and physiological indices of anxiety, we directly test how much in-the-moment anxiety explains math-anxious underperformance. Results indicate that in-the-moment anxiety indeed explains why math-anxious people underperform-but only partially, suggesting a need to seriously consider alternative mechanisms. Results also showed that while some highly math-anxious individuals-those with high levels of heart rate variability-experienced less in-the-moment anxiety, they nevertheless performed no better at math. For these individuals, math-anxious underperformance must occur for reasons unrelated to in-the-moment anxiety. More broadly, our findings point to substantial individual heterogeneity in the mechanisms underlying math-anxious underperformance. Accounting for this mechanistic heterogeneity may prove vital for optimally boosting math performance in math-anxious individuals.

Changes in Chinese students' academic emotions after examinations: Pride in success, shame in failure, and self-loathing in comparison

BACKGROUND

Several attempts have been made to examine students' academic emotions (AEs) in Western contexts, but less is known about how students' self-reported emotions vary over time.

AIMS

The study aimed to understand Chinese students' emotional responses to academic events and the impact of high-stakes testing on their AEs in the first year with a repeated-measures survey after the Semester 1 and Semester 2 mid-term examinations.

SAMPLES

351 first-year university students completed both surveys in an elite Chinese university, where the top 10% of first-year students were assigned to an honours programme.

METHODS

Self-reported AEs survey responses were evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis. Invariance testing between honours and ordinary students and between semesters was used to examine between-group differences across time.

RESULTS

A three-factor model of AEs (i.e., admired, shame, and self-loathing) was found in both semesters, with strong invariance between semesters. Mean scores between groups were equivalent and semester. However, self-loathing had the lowest mean (mean = 2.50; between mostly disagree and slightly agree), admired was at moderately agree (mean = 4.00), and shame was strongest at just over moderately agree (mean = 4.20).

CONCLUSIONS

This study reveals a three-factor structure of AEs and the stability of these emotions among highly successful Chinese learners. Despite being elite students, this sample of Chinese learners felt shame and pride in response to mid-term examinations.

Control, anxiety and test performance: Self-reported and physiological indicators of anxiety as mediators

BACKGROUND

This study investigated the role of different test anxiety components (affective, cognitive, motivational and physiological) as mediators between control and performance as proposed by Pekrun's control-value theory (CVT). While all components were assessed via self-report, the physiological component was additionally assessed via electrodermal activity (EDA).

AIMS

We examined the relative impact of the self-reported anxiety components and EDA in this mediating mechanism to identify the most relevant assessment(s) (i.e., self-reported anxiety components and/or EDA) for predicting test performance.

SAMPLE

The study comprised 50 eighth graders.

METHODS

Data were collected during a mathematics test comprising six task blocks. State self-reports of control and anxiety components along with test performance and other test emotions were collected block-wise (i.e., repeated assessments within students). EDA was continuously recorded.

RESULTS

Consistent with CVT, intra-individual mediation analysis with multiple mediators revealed that higher control predicted lower anxiety (i.e., all self-reported components). Unexpectedly, higher control was associated with increased EDA. Follow-up analyses taking other test emotions into account suggested this might reflect positive activation. Correlations between EDA and control and self-reported anxiety components differed depending on which test emotion was dominant in each situation. Regarding test performance, only the cognitive component was a significant mediator and thus seems to play a pivotal role in the relationship between control and performance.

CONCLUSIONS

Distinguishing between anxiety components and including unbiased physiological measures improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind the relationship between test anxiety and performance. Higher physiological arousal may be a sign of anxiety but can also be a sign of positive activation. When aiming to reduce negative effects of anxiety on performance, targeting the cognitive component seems crucial. Implications of these findings for educational and psychological practice are discussed.

The dynamic experience of taking an examination: Ever changing cortisol and expectancy for success

BACKGROUND

This study examined the relations between students' expectancies for success and a physiological component of test anxiety, salivary cortisol, during an authentic testing setting.

AIMS

The aim of the study was to better understand the connection between shifts in students' control appraisals and changes in the physiological component of test anxiety.

SAMPLE

The study comprised 45 undergraduate engineering majors in the United States.

METHODS

Survey data concerning students' expectancy for success and saliva samples were taken before, during and after the practice midterm examination prior to their actual in-class examination.

RESULTS

Students' expectancy for success declined during the examination while cortisol levels declined from the beginning to middle of the examination and began to increase again as a function of time. Although students' initial levels of expectancy for success and cortisol were not correlated, there was a negative relation between change in cortisol and change in expectancy for success.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study demonstrates a relation between salivary cortisol, a physiological component of test anxiety and students' expectancy for success in an authentic testing context. Most students saw a decrease in cortisol during the examination, suggesting anticipatory anxiety prior to the test and a return to homeostasis as the examination progressed. Some students, however, did not see a declination in cortisol, suggesting they may not have recovered from pre-examination anxiety. The negative relation between change in cortisol and expectancy for success suggests that students who had the greatest decrease in expectancy for success saw the smallest recovery in cortisol.

Learning With a Double-Edged Sword? Beneficial and Detrimental Effects of Learning Tests-Taking a First Look at Linkages Among Tests, Later Learning Outcomes, Stress Perceptions, and Intelligence

It has often been shown that tests as intentionally hindered and difficult learning tasks increase long-term learning compared to easier tasks. Previous work additionally indicated that higher intelligence might serve as a prerequisite for such beneficial effects of tests. Nevertheless, despite their long-term learning effects, tests were also found to be evaluated as more negative and to lead to more stress and anxiety compared to easier control tasks. Stress and anxiety, in turn, often yield detrimental effects on learning outcomes. Hence, we hypothesized that tests increase later learning outcomes but simultaneously also lead to more stress perceptions. Such increased stress was, in turn, hypothesized to reduce later learning outcomes (thus, stress might serve as a mediator of the beneficial effects of tests on learning). All these assumed effects should further be moderated by intelligence, insofar as that higher intelligence should increase beneficial effects of tests on learning, should decrease stress perceptions caused by tests, and should reduce detrimental effects of stress on learning outcomes. Higher intelligence was also assumed to be generally associated with higher learning. We conducted a laboratory study (N=89) to test these hypotheses: Participants underwent an intelligence screening, then worked on either a test or a re-reading control task, and reported their immediate stress perceptions. Later learning outcomes were assessed after 1week. The results supported all assumed main effects but none of the assumed interactions. Thus, participants using tests had higher long-term learning outcomes compared to participants using re-reading tasks. However, participants using tests also perceived more immediate stress compared to participants that only re-read the materials. These stress perceptions in turn diminished the beneficial effects of tests. Stress was also generally related to lower learning, whereas higher intelligence was linked to higher learning and also to lower stress. Hence, our findings again support the often assumed benefits of tests-even when simultaneously considering learners' intelligence and and when considering the by tests caused stress perceptions. Notably, controlling for stress further increases these long-term learning benefits. We then discuss some limitations and boundaries of our work as well as ideas for future studies.

Test anxiety components: an intra-individual approach testing their control antecedents and effects on performance

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Although anxiety consists of multiple components, including cognitive, affective, motivational, and physiological, and some findings suggest that there might be differences regarding their control antecedents and effects on performance, previous studies have largely neglected to examine these components separately and for reasons of convenience often assessed test anxiety as a unified construct using a single-item. Therefore, this study investigated the different test anxiety components with the goal to: (1) examine the relative impact of the anxiety components in the mediating mechanism that connects control and performance - as proposed by Pekrun's control-value theory, and (2) determine which specific anxiety component is underlying common single-item anxiety measures.

METHODS

The research questions were investigated using an intra-individual approach in a sample of N = 137 German 8th graders during a mathematics exam.

RESULTS

As expected, control was negatively related to all anxiety components, but associations varied in strength. Additionally, the components differed in their relative impact on performance, with the cognitive component being central for this outcome. Furthermore, common single-item measures seem to specifically assess the affective component, and thus not the component most relevant for test performance.

CONCLUSION

Consequently, our study strongly recommends to distinguish between the anxiety components depending on the research question at hand.

Peers als Quelle aktueller Motivation?

Zusammenfassung. Die Relevanz von Peers für die Entwicklung von Jugendlichen konnte in verschiedenen Studien bereits bestätigt werden. Im Unterricht zeigt sich dies u.a. durch höhere situative Motivation und Freude sowie geringerem Stressempfinden während sozialer Interaktionen mit Mitschülerinnen und -schülern verglichen mit Einzelarbeitssituationen. Allerdings stellte sich auch heraus, dass Jugendliche mit Verhaltensauffälligkeiten Schwierigkeiten im Knüpfen und Aufrechterhalten von sozialen Kontakten und Freundschaften haben. Während in bisherigen Studien Verhalten als dichotome Variable untersucht wurde, wird hier ein dimensionaler, personzentrierter Ansatz zur Identifizierung von Gruppen mit heterogenen Verhaltensweisen verfolgt. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist daher die Untersuchung von Effekten sozialer Interaktionen im Unterricht auf das emotionale Erleben von Jugendlichen mit heterogenen Verhaltensweisen. Zudem wird ein möglicher Moderationseffekt der Klassenkomposition in Bezug auf das Verhalten überprüft. Hierzu wurden N = 719 Schülerinnen und Schülern der fünften und sechsten Jahrgangsstufe unter Verwendung der experience sampling method zu zwei bis drei Messzeitpunkten pro Tag an fünf aufeinanderfolgenden Schultagen zu ihrem aktuellen emotionalen Erleben und ihrem sozialen Kontext befragt. Insgesamt lagen 8870 „Momentaufnahmen“ des emotionalen Erlebens und von Unterrichtssituationen vor. Auf der Grundlage von Verhaltenseinschätzungen durch Lehrpersonen wurden mittels latenter Profilanalysen drei Profiltypen innerhalb der Schülerschaft identifiziert: Jugendliche mit adaptivem, internalisierendem und externalisierendem Verhalten. Ergebnisse von Multilevel-Strukturgleichungsmodellen zeigen, dass Jugendliche in Unterrichtssituationen, in denen sie mit ihren Peers interagieren (z.B. in Partner- oder Gruppenarbeiten), motivierter und weniger gestresst sind als in Einzelsituationen. Für Jugendliche mit externalisierendem oder internalisierendem Verhalten ist dieser Effekt stärker ausgeprägt. Die geringfügigen, jedoch nicht signifikanten differenziellen moderierenden Effekte verweisen zudem darauf, dass der Zusammenhang des emotionalen Erlebens und der Peerinteraktionen für Jugendliche nicht durch ihr Klassenumfeld in Bezug auf prosoziales oder problematisches Verhalten moderiert wird. Die Ergebnisse werden sowohl methodisch als auch inhaltlich diskutiert, unter anderem in Bezug auf die Frage, ob und inwiefern Peers Quellen aktueller Motivation im Unterricht darstellen.

Examining the Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of Test Emotions Across Testing Platform, Gender, and Time

Few studies have examined the psychometric properties of the test-related items from the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ). Using a sample of 955 university students, we examined the factor structure of 12 emotion items measuring test-related anger, boredom, enjoyment, and pride. Results indicated the four emotions were distinct, allowing for further examination of measurement invariance of the items across testing platform (computer-based vs. pencil-paper test) and gender. Configural, metric, and scalar invariance was supported for testing platform and gender. Given interest in modeling change in emotions, we also examined whether the items were invariant across time by measuring emotions at 3 times during a test. Using a sample of 651 university students, configural, metric, and scalar invariance was supported across time. The findings provide important structural validity evidence for the item responses and support the comparison of emotions across testing platform, gender, and time.

Do girls really experience more anxiety in mathematics?

Two studies were conducted to examine gender differences in trait (habitual) versus state (momentary) mathematics anxiety in a sample of students (Study 1: N = 584; Study 2: N = 111). For trait math anxiety, the findings of both studies replicated previous research showing that female students report higher levels of anxiety than do male students. However, no gender differences were observed for state anxiety, as assessed using experience-sampling methods while students took a math test (Study 1) and attended math classes (Study 2). The discrepant findings for trait versus state math anxiety were partly accounted for by students' beliefs about their competence in mathematics, with female students reporting lower perceived competence than male students despite having the same average grades in math. Implications for educational practices and the assessment of anxiety are discussed.