Roles of attribution, affect, and cognitive interference in test anxiety.

The impact of performance outcome, task difficulty, and level of test anxiety on attributional accounts for performance and achievement-related affect was explored. Subjects high and low in test anxiety (Sarason, 1972) worked on tasks of varying difficulty, evaluated their own performance, and then responded to two types of attribution items, inventories of major affective reactions (Izard, 1972), and a measure of cognitive interference (Sarason and Stoops, 1978). Meaningful attributional accounts were uncovered; in particular, performance outcome and task difficulty had independent effects on subjects' attributional judgments. Cognitive interference was implicated as a factor contributing to the attributional predispositions of persons differing in test anxiety, and it was a major determinant of affective reactions. In addition, subjects' affective responses were predictably associated with their perceived performance outcome, their level of test anxiety, the difficulty of the task, and subjects' attributional accounts of the factors influencing their performance. Results are discussed in terms of the cognitive components and phenomenological experience of test anxiety and the consequent impact anxiety may have on achievement-related behavior.