Test anxiety and working memory

In the present study, information processing of test anxiety is explained within the framework of the ACT* model. The author used the speed-accuracy tradeoff method to investigate the effect of test anxiety on each subsystem of working memory. The sample was made up of 119 college students enrolled in an educational psychology course. Test anxiety affected performance on the verbal-analogies task but not on the rhyming-judgment and visual-spatial tasks. The participants' subvocalization of the rhyming words may have drawn attention to the task itself and preempted the effect of test anxiety on task performance, Also, the activation processes for the visual-spatial tasks may have occurred in a different dimension or separate from the verbal processes of test anxiety.