Psychology ETDs

Publication Date

12-4-1975

Abstract

The effects of false emotional feedback and modeling on the cognitive manipulation of test anxiety were studied. A Composite Scale of Test Anxiety (Koenig, 1973) was administered to introductory psychology students. The distribution of scores was divided into thirds, and subjects were defined as either high, average, or low test-anxious. Forty-eight high and forty-eight low test-anxious subjects were then randomly chosen from subjects in the pretest population who had volunteered to participate in the actual experiment. They were assigned to each of four conditions (false emotional feedback, modeling, combined false emotional feedback and modeling, and control). There were 12 subjects in each condition. It was hypothesized that if subjects were given an opportunity to view a low anxious model perform a task prior to their own performance on a similar task, that this would facilitate the subjects' performance when compared to the performance of subjects who were provided with similar analogies in a warm-up task, but who observed no actual modeling. Further, it was hypothesized that if subjects were provided with false galvanic skin response feedback that indicated that the subjects were responding to the test-taking situation in a low anxious manner, that this condition would also facilitate the subjects' performance when compared to the performance of subjects who received no such feedback. Performance was measured in terms of the number of correct responses on an analogies task, omissions while performing the task, and changes in self-report measures of test anxiety. Finally, it was hypothesized that the condition that would lead to the greatest performance facilitation would be one in which subjects received combined false emotional feedback and modeling procedures. The results supported none of the above hypotheses. Additional findings, however, indicated that high test-anxious subjects made significantly fewer correct responses than did low test-anxious subjects, and that the number of correct responses for high test­anxious subjects was significantly negatively correlated with anxiety change. The findings were then discussed in relation to the most recent studies in the areas of cognitive manipulation of test anxiety via false emotional feedback and modeling.

Degree Name

Psychology

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

Psychology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Samuel Roll

Second Committee Member

Britton Kenneth Ruebush

Third Committee Member

John Paul Gluck Jr.

Fourth Committee Member

Joseph Anthony Parsons

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

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