"I Knew It Cold Before the Exam": A Test of the Anxiety-Blockage Hypothesis

Anxiety arousal is associated with decrements in academic performance. Almost without exception, an interference interpretation of these findings has been advanced, in which anxiety is said to temporarily disrupt otherwise normal intellectual functioning. In this study, we investigated the hypothesis that anxiety inhibits test performance by temporarily blocking previously learned responses. Following a midterm exam in an introductory psychology course, college students ( N = 189) were administered the same test items under nonevaluative conditions. The hypothesis that high-anxious individuals as compared with low-anxious individuals would retrieve a greater degree of information not previously available to them when they were assessed under reduced threat was only partially supported. The fact that anxiety did not control performance gains on complex test items casts doubt on the interference hypothesis, at least for difficult material. However, easy-item performance provided some evidence for an interference phenomenon. An interaction indicated that previously blocked information became available only for those high-anxious students who had initially used effective study strategies. Simply put, learning must be present in order for it to be interfered with. Finally, path analysis confirmed the relative importance of anxiety phenomena to classroom test performance in a time-ordered causal network involving ability level, study effectiveness, and anxiety arousal. These results add credence to a recent interpretation of anxiety as a failure-of-self phenomenon.