Interpretative Bias in Test Anxiety

The tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a threatening fashion as a function of test anxiety was examined. Ambiguous sentences were presented describing situations from which neutral, ego-threat or physical-threat consequences could result. In Experiment 1 subjects wrote disambiguating sentences for each ambiguous sentence; in Experiment 2, they read the ambiguous sentences and then performed a recognition task on these sentences as well as on disambiguating sentences (neutral or threat-related) implied by them; in Experiment 3, they read the ambiguous sentences followed by the disambiguating versions word-byword. Results indicated that test anxiety was associated with (a) a high probability of writing egothreat disambiguating sentences (Experiment 1), (b) a high false-alarm rate for disambiguating versions confirming ego-threats (Experiment 2), and (c) shorter reading times for the last word of disambiguating sentences confirming ego-threats, though reading times for a target word representing the threat were not affected (Experiment 3). It is concluded (a) that high-test-anxiety individuals show a bias towards ego-threat interpretations of ambiguity, but not towards physical-threat interpretations; and (b) that this bias does not occur automatically during lexical access to the meanings of ambiguous information, but that it is involved in later processes of selection of threat-realated meanings, their elaboration or integration with the context.