Test Anxiety and Physiological Arousal: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Roos, Anna‐Lena; Goetz, Thomas; Voracek, Martin; Krannich, Maike; Bieg, Madeleine; Jarrell, Amanda; Pekrun, Reinhard

doi:10.1007/s10648-020-09543-z

Cited by 84 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 109 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our data partially align with previous studies, such that trait anxiety and dental fear relate to a subject’s amount of facial self-contact, but fear of COVID-19 does not seem to relate [ 15 , 18 ]. However, COVID-19-related fear is very specific and related to (possible or perceived risk of) contamination.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…These movements occur unconsciously and can help regulate emotions [ 17 ]. It has been observed that people with anxiety or dental anxiety present a higher heart rate, higher heart rate variability and lower skin conductivity [ 18 ], as well as a greater amount of movement [ 15 ], but the association of these factors with facial self-contact has not been studied. This aspect is especially interesting because if people can touch their faces approximately 30 times an hour in situations that do not elicit anxiety [ 19 ], the number of facial self-contacts may increase in stressful situations [ 17 ] and increased facial self-contact may help transmit and spread the SARS-CoV-2 [ 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Anxiety and facial self-contacts: possible impact on COVID-19 transmission in dental practice

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background The purpose was to analyse the associations between dental and trait anxiety, fear of COVID-19 and the duration and frequency of spontaneous hand-to-face contact (self-contact). Methods A cross-sectional design was carried out with 128 adult patients from four dental clinics in Madrid, during the confinement, from March 15 to May 15. The patients’ movements in the waiting room were monitored with Microsoft Kinect Software, also completed the Trait anxiety subscale of the STAI, the COVID-19 Fear and the S-DAI questionnaire. Results Associations were observed between the duration and frequency of facial, mask and eye contact with trait anxiety and dental fear was determined only by the frequency of this self-contact. Trait anxiety is associated with dental anxiety and with fear of COVID-19. Although facial self-contact is higher in women, it also rises in men as dental fear increases. Moreover, dental anxiety is a good predictor of trait anxiety and the incidence of facial self-contact. Conclusions Understanding the possible associations between biopsychosocial factors, such as trait anxiety, dental anxiety and self-contact is important. It may help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the population as well as enabling the formulation of effective interventions to improve oral health care through the implementation of dental care programmes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and facial self-contacts: possible impact on COVID-19 transmission in dental practice

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Accordingly, it was assumed that: Given the higher arousal associated with anxiety [ 32 ], greater trait anxiety should be related to larger attentional bias for the change detection in a flicker paradigm, regardless of the emotional value of the stimulus. The ability to detect changes was expected to be greater for negative stimuli.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and Attentional Processes: The Role of Resting Heart Rate Variability

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individuals with high anxiety preferentially focus attention on emotional information. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays an important role in modulating both anxiety and attentional processes. Despite many studies having evaluated attentional bias in anxious people, few of them have investigated the change blindness phenomenon associated with the attentional response toward salient stimuli, considering the role of the ANS. This study aimed to examine the role of heart rate variability (HRV) in trait anxiety and top-down and bottom-up attentional processes toward emotional stimuli. Seventy-five healthy university students were divided into high (N = 39) and low (N = 36) trait anxiety groups and completed a change detection flicker task with neutral, positive, and negative stimuli. The results evidenced a different attentional pattern between people with high and low anxiety considering both the two attentional processes and the valence of the stimuli. Specifically, individuals with high anxiety showed a bias in elaborating emotional stimuli related to their salience (i.e., negative stimuli were faster elaborated than neutral and positive stimuli when top-down attentional mechanisms were involved, while slower performances were highlighted considering bottom-up attentional mechanisms in response to emotional stimuli compared to neutral stimuli). Moreover, an association between HRV, trait anxiety levels, and change blindness phenomenon was confirmed. These results underline the role of HRV as a possible predictor of the alteration of attentional mechanism in anxiety.

show abstract

“…Although, anxiety is the cause of our inappropriate performance and many mistakes, but a normal level of anxiety seems to be necessary for hardworking and being responsible (1,2). Among types of anxiety, test anxiety is a psychological response, consist of worry, stress, emotionality, lack of con dence, fear of failure, and interference that can be experienced by an individual before, during, and after an exam or similar situations (3). Like the other kinds of anxieties, a certain level of the test anxiety could be push students to work harder and learn better, but mostly the high level of this bad feeling causes psychological distress, low performance, underachievement, demotivation, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote Online Exams Anxiety during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Cross-Sectional Study among Medical Students

Mastour

Ghalibaf

Niroumand

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Introduction: Assessment and evaluation are major parts of the medical curriculum which motivate students to study, being a competent physician, and achieving the medical education eligible goals. Medical students, especially at undergraduate levels, experience a significant amount of anxiety due to frequent exams. Meanwhile, the coronavirus disease 2019 disaster forced higher educational institutes all over the world to adopt distance learning. So remote online exams were used as a kind of assessment that can lead to new paradigms.Methods: This cross-sectional study was planned to assess the remote online exams anxiety during COVID-19 Pandemic by analyzing test anxiety categories among basic science and pre-clinical medical students and its correlation between genders in the School of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2020. Data collection tools were Demographic Questionnaire and Sarasons’s Test Anxiety Scale. Descriptive statistics (mean, percentages) and analytical statistics (t-test and one-way ANOVA) were used to analyze the data with SPSS version 11.5.Results: 290 medical students in basic science and pre-clinical courses were enrolled. 194 (66.4%) of participants were female and 177 (60.6%) were in basic sciences course. The prevalence of mild, moderate, and severe anxiety was 27.9%, 36.9%, and 35.2% respectively. The difference in the mean and SD of anxiety score in basic sciences students and pre-clinical students was not statistically significant (Pvalue=0.26), yet the results indicated that the level of anxiety in females (19.07+7.11) is significantly higher than males (14.44+7.15) (Pvalue<0.001).Conclusion: According to the current study, there is a critical need to take steps to recommend stress management techniques and bring reforms in E-learning and E-assessment systems to lower the anxiety in medical students while providing a stable and reliable electronic exam environment can be helpful.

show abstract

Test Anxiety and Physiological Arousal: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Cited by 84 publications

References 109 publications

Anxiety and facial self-contacts: possible impact on COVID-19 transmission in dental practice

Anxiety and facial self-contacts: possible impact on COVID-19 transmission in dental practice

Anxiety and Attentional Processes: The Role of Resting Heart Rate Variability

Remote Online Exams Anxiety during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Cross-Sectional Study among Medical Students

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About