Influence of exam stress on sustained attention of students with different levels of trait anxiety / 第二军医大学学报

ABSTRACT

Objective:To examine the influence of exam stress on the sustained attention of students with different levels of trait anxiety. Methods: With the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), 10 students with high trait anxiety (high trait anxiety group, H group) and 10 with non-high trait anxiety (non-high trait anxiety group, NH group) were randomly sampled from 400 students taking the coming College English Test-Band 4 (CET-4). Their attention was measured with digit cancellation test and the event related potentials during the control phase (the period was chosen 2 weeks after the beginning of the semester and there was no examination in the following 3 months) and the stress phase ( from 2 weeks to 1 day before CET-4 examination). Results: The right cancellation number of the NH group was higher than that of the H group(F=8.178, P=0.007). During the control phase the P300 amplitude and latency were similar between the 2 groups (F= 0.125, 0.127, respectively;P= 0.728, 0.726, respectively). During stress phase the P300 amplitude of the H group was significantly lower than that of the NH group(F=12.913, P=0.002)and the P300 latency of the H groups was longer than that of the NH group(F=16.952, P= 0.001). In NH group, the P300 latency in the stress phase was significantly shorter than that of the control phase (F= 6.514, P=0.020). Conclusion: Exam stress has different influences on the sustained attention of people with different levels of trait anxiety, which suggests that people with high trait anxiety are the target population for stress management.