Liu, Shaohang; Zhao, Wenbo; Shanks, David R; Hu, Xiao; Luo, Liang; Yang, Chunliang; (2024) Effects of Test Anxiety on Self-Testing and Learning Performance. Educational Psychology Review , 36 , Article 59. 10.1007/s10648-024-09882-1.

Text Shanks_Liu et al. (EPR, 2024) FINAL.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 8 June 2025. Download (1MB)

Abstract

Practice testing (i.e., practice retrieval) has been established as an efective learning strategy. Uncovering potential factors infuencing self-testing usage is a prerequisite to promote its practical use. The present study reports fve experiments exploring whether test anxiety (TA) and test stake (1) afect self-testing usage (Experiments 1–5) and (2) infuence learning performance through their negative efects on self-testing usage (Experiments 1, 4, and 5). Experiment 1 analyzed data from 459 high school students collected via a survey and found both that TA negatively predicted students’ daily use of self-testing and that self-testing usage mediated the negative association between TA and academic performance. The negative association between TA and self-testing usage was further replicated in a laboratory experiment (Experiment 2). Another quasi-experiment (Experiment 3) showed that students were less likely to test themselves when preparing for a high-stake than a low-stake exam. Experiment 4 replicated this fnding and additionally demonstrated that a high-stake test led to poorer learning via its negative infuence on self-testing usage. Experiment 5 demonstrated that a high-stake test provoked high state anxiety, which then induced avoidance of self-testing and ultimately impaired learning. Overall, these fndings demonstrate a negative efect of TA on self-testing usage, in turn leading to poor learning. Practical implications are discussed.

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