Abstract

HERNANDEZ-POZO, MARÍA DEL ROCÍO; CORONADO ALVAREZ, OSMALDO; ARAUJO CONTRERAS, VIRIDIANA  and  CEREZO RESENDIZ, SANDRA. ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, SELF-EVALUATION, AND SCHOOL ANXIETY AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS. Act.Colom.Psicol. [online]. 2008, vol.11, n.1, pp.13-23. ISSN 0123-9155.

Behavioral researchers in the field of education have stressed the need for designing programs aimed to reduce adverse effects of anxiety on academic performance among high risk students. This study was designed to corroborate the relationship between academic performance and school anxiety reported in the literature, and to verify if the direction of this relationship is the same when behavioral indexes of school anxiety are employed. The study was conducted with 22 college students of a public university. They were subjected to 25 academic exams and three self rated measures which produced an average grade and a study index respectively. School anxiety was measured by means of a discrimination task based on a modified version of Stroop’s paradigm. Results showed that under-achievers produced the highest indicators of behavioral anxiety. Additionally, it was found that students who had been systematically located in the lower levels of the study index showed the highest levels of anxiety. Emotional arousal was registered by means of a systolic blood pressure measurement taken before or after the behavioral task depending on whether it was dealt with students who showed low-study indexes or low-average grades. The use of behavioral and physiological indexes of anxiety supports previous findings on the inverse relationship between anxiety and academic performance and the direct relationship between the academic self concept and school grades in a situation designed to minimize the emotional effect associated with the exposure to multiple exams.

Keywords : school anxiety; Stroop paradigm; academic performance; self concept; college students.

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