Abstract
dc:description.abstract<p>The present study examined the relationship between test anxiety, working memory, and verbal SAT performance. Test anxiety negatively affects performance because it decreases working memory space available for processing test information. However, the present study wanted to asses this theory with an experimental design to infer causation about test anxiety. Therefore, participants with high and low trait test anxiety were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Participants in the experimental group completed the assessments under conditions of elevated stress. However, these conditions had no effect on their performance. The only observed effect was that participants with high test trait anxiety scored lower on the verbal SAT than their lower test trait anxiety counterparts. However, no difference in working memory span was observed between participants with high and low test trait anxiety. The null results between experimental and control groups were attributed to ineffective stress manipulation. That is, the participants in the experimental group did not feel any more stress than participants in the control group. Future studies will have to utilize methods directed towards increasing effect size, such as recruiting a larger sample size and using more extreme scores as cutoffs.</p>
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Science in Experimental Psychology (M.S.)
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Thesis (open access)
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Department of Psychology
- Year dc:date.available
- 2010
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Al-Khalil, Kareem
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Janie Wilson
- Larry Locker
Subjects
dc:subject × 10Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Repository record dc:identifier
- https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/437
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1437