咀嚼口香糖对考试焦虑的缓解作用_英文_冉俐雯.pdf

咀嚼口香糖对考试焦虑的缓解作用 冉俐雯 1 2 刘翔平1 2 周雅1 2 苏洋1 李毅1 王硕1 1 北京师范大学心理学院 北京100875 2 应用实验心理北京市重点实验室 北京师范大学 北京100875 摘要 目的 旨在考察咀嚼口香糖对不同特质焦虑水平的高考生状态考试焦虑的缓解作用 方法 随机选取高中 三年级理科生288人 根据高中低特质焦虑水平以及是否咀嚼口香糖将被试分为六组 在高考模考前测查状态考试 焦虑问卷 结果 嚼 不嚼口香糖组的状态考试焦虑分数差异显著 F 15 61 P 0 0001 即咀嚼口香糖的主效应显 著 在低 中特质焦虑组 嚼口香糖组的状态考试焦虑分数显著低于不嚼口香糖组 F值 P值分别为 F 16 30 P 0 001与F 7 52 P 0 005 在高特质焦虑组 嚼 不嚼口香糖组的状态考试焦虑分数没有显著差异 F 0 21 P 0 05 结 论 咀嚼口香糖能有效缓解低 中特质焦虑学生的状态考试焦虑 关键词 咀嚼口香糖 考试焦虑 特质焦虑 状态焦虑 中图分类号 R395 1文献标识码 A文章编号 1005 3611 2010 06 0731 04 Effect of Gum Chewing on Test Anxiety RAN Li wen LIU Xiang ping ZHOU Ya SU Yang LI Yi WANG Shuo School of Psychology Beijing Normal University Beijing 100875 China Abstract Objectvie A 3 2 randomized control group experiment was designed to investigate the effect of gum chew ing on test anxiety Methods 288 Senior 3 science students 120 female 137 male differentiated into high medium and low trait anxiety based on the scores of the Middle School Students Test Adaptation Scale were randomly assigned to the gum chewing and non gum chewing conditions State anxiety in test situation was measured by the Middle School Students State Test Anxiety Scale which was developed for the purpose of the study Results An ANOVA of the state test anxiety scores revealed a significant main effect of treatment conditions on test anxiety and a significant interaction effect between treatment conditions and trait anxiety levels Conclusion The study results suggest that gum chewing can act as an effective intervention to relieve test anxiety for the low and medium trait anxious students Key words Gum chewing Test anxiety Trait anxiety State anxiety 通讯作者 刘翔平 四川省成都市石室中学 The calming effect of gum chewing has been tes tified in controlled laboratory experiments For in stance using the defined intensity stress simulator DISS a computer based multi tasking program which reliably induces stress and anxiety Scholey and colleagues 1 compared the pre post stress changes of gum chewing and non gum chewing participants un der two intensities of DISS At both levels of stress the gum chewing condition was related to significantly re duced stress and state anxiety It is important to note that however the effect of gum chewing is not unlim ited though gum chewing might effectively mediate particular stress specific emotions some severe levels of stress seem not affected by chewing gum 2 As a specific type of anxiety test anxiety is an unpleasant experience that occurs in test situations where the person feels he or she will be evaluated It s reported that in China approximately 34 41 ele mentary and secondary students were experiencing test anxiety Confronted with this problem psychologists counselors and educators apply themselves to develop various solutions including biofeedback training re laxation exercise systematic desensitization cognitive behavioral therapy even drug treatment Nevertheless gum chewing as an intervention has not been tried be fore in the area of test anxiety Given that gum chew ing can effectively relieve the general anxiety and stress experience it may have the similar impact on the specific anxiety The purpose of this study is to explore whether gum chewing affects test anxiety or not In the context of trait state distinction in anxiety research test anxiety was investigated from both of the trait and state perspectives in this study According to 中国临床心理学杂志2010年第18卷第6期 731 Spielberger s widely accepted theories trait anxiety denotes individual s general tendency to respond to perceived threats and is often characterized as a sta ble personality disposition whereas state anxiety re flects a transitory pattern of emotion that elicited by external frightening stressors Students with different levels of test anxiety trait are predisposed to present different intensities of anxiety symptoms in face of tests The positive influence of gum chewing on state anxiety has been proved in previous researches 1 Rel atively little is known about how trait anxiety interacts with gum chewing to mediate state anxiety To sum up we expected that students in the gum chewing condition would report reduced test anx iety level than the comparable students who didn t chew gum taking trait anxiety into account gum chewing might exhibit different impacts on students test anxiety as their trait anxiety levels vary 1Methods 1 1Subjects 755 Senior 3 science students from a key sec ondary school of Liaoning province volunteered to par ticipant In the school s sixth college entrance ana logue examination all the 755 students were randomly assigned to 21 examination rooms 20 rooms each with 36 students and 1 room with 35 students This study randomly recruited 8 examination rooms of 288 stu dents among which 4 rooms of 144 students were randomly assigned to treatment group undergoing the gum chewing condition the other 4 rooms of 144 stu dents served as a control group During the process of statistical analysis the valid subjects remain 257 120 female 137 male 132 from treatment group and 125 from control group 1 2Measures Two measures were used the Middle School Stu dents Test Adaptation Scale 3 and the Middle School Students State Test Anxiety Scale developed for this study respectively assessing trait test anxiety and state test anxiety Participants respond to the items of both mea sures using visual analogue scales VAS which are more sensitive to small changes than are simple de scriptive ordinal scales VAS is often used in epi demiologic and clinical research to measure the inten sity or frequency of various symptoms On either of the measures VAS is shown in a horizontal 10 cm graduated numbered from 0 to 10 line whose ends are defined as the extreme limits of the parameter to be measured orientated from the left completely dis agree 0 to the right completely agree 10 The Middle School Students Test Adaptation Scale is a 48 item self report instrument which re gards trait test anxiety as a six dimensional structure consisting of physiological reactions negative emotion ality test irrelevant thinking distractions distaste for test ineffective preparatory behaviors and worries about test result This measure has been shown to own favorable internal reliability alphas 0 93 split half reliability split half 0 85 and temporal reliability test retest 0 94 In addition its correlation to the trait portion of State Trait Anxiety Inventory 4 is 0 75 Students state test anxiety levels were evaluated prior to taking the test with the 23 item Middle School Students State Test Anxiety Scale which was designed on the basis of the Middle School Students Test Adaptation Scale the State Trait Anxiety Inven tory and the Self rating Anxiety Scale 5 Using data obtained from 109 Senior 3 science students 57 fe male 52 male this instrument was found to produce scores indicating an acceptable level of internal con sistency alphas 0 80 and construct stability split half 0 78 Besides except for the 23 items one ques tion targeted at a general evaluation of the test anxiety level was also presented on the measure which served as a criterion and made the measure reach a criterion validity of 0 54 P 0 000 0 001 1 3Procedure The test situation investigated in the study was Senior 3 science students college entrance analogue mathematics examination which successfully contribut ed to the evocation of test anxiety as we supposed In addition to the personality traits perceived importance and difficulty of the test are also known to influence test anxiety All of the 755 students filled out the Middle School Students Test Adaptation Scale 7 days prior to 732 Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology Vol 18 No 6 2010 the examination Through calculation two critical points to distinguish high medium and low trait anx iety were set at the 75thand 25thpercentile On the test day the randomly recruited 8 rooms of students were informed to enter their exam rooms 15 minutes earlier to the beginning of the math exam Once seated students in the treatment group were provided with flavored gums and requested to keep chewing for 10 minutes the others in the control group were not given any instructions just sitting in their seats and making preparations for the test 10 minutes later students in both groups were instructed to complete the Middle School Students State Test Anxiety Scale The measure can be finished within maximally 3 minutes that averts disturbing the normal procedure of the exam 2Results 2 1Main effect of gum chewing on test anxiety The descriptive statistics of the state test anxiety scores for each of the six groups are presented in Table 1 These data were analyzed utilizing a 3 2 analysis of variance ANOVA which yielded a signifi cant main effect for treatment conditions F 1 251 15 61 P 0 0001 The treatment group that received the gum chewing condition had a mean of 2 82 test anxiety whereas the comparable control condition mean was 3 34 Thus as predicted gum chewing can effectively relieve test anxiety 2 2Interaction between gum chewing and trait anxiety The ANOVA of the state test anxiety scores also indicatedasignificantinteractioneffectbetween treatment conditions and trait anxiety levels F 2 251 3 10 P 0 047 0 05 As Figure 1 shows the gum non gum decline in state test anxiety was nearly thrice as great for low trait anxious versus medium trait anxious subjects For high trait anxious subjects mean state test anxiety scores seemed completely none discrepancy between gum and non gum condition Following the significant interaction effect sim ple effect of treatment conditions was tested respec tively within three different levels of trait anxiety See Table 2 The gum and non gum group differed sig nificantly on their state test anxiety scores within both of the low and medium trait anxious levels F 1 253 16 30 P 0 001 andF 1 253 7 5 P 0 007 0 005 respectively However no significant difference was reported across the gum and non gum conditions within the high trait anxious level F 1 253 0 21 P 0 644 0 5 These findings suggest that for the low and medium trait anxious stu dents gum chewing can act as an effective buffer a gainst test anxiety and yet for the students suffering high trait anxiety the effect of gum chewing on test anxiety vanishes Figure 1Mean state test anxiety scores for the treatment and control groups across three different trait test anxiety levels Table 1Mean scores and standard deviations of trait test anxiety and state test anxiety for the treatment and control groups The effect of treatment conditions was significant as thePvalue shown in the table 中国临床心理学杂志2010年第18卷第6期 733 Table 2Simple effect of treatment conditions within three levels of trait anxiety 3Discussion Results from the current study contribute as an extension to the past research literature investigating the positive impact of gum chewing on subjective ex periences 2 Chewing gum has further demonstrated its capability to lessen test anxiety especially for the test takers whose trait anxiety levels are not exces sively situated The underlying mechanisms responsible for the effect identified in the study remain unclear up to the present time but may involve neurohormonal activi ties According to Yue Huang Zhou 6 gum chewing significantly increases the cerebral blood oxygenation level and activates the primary motor cortex right posterior parietal cortex bilateral cerebellum and some regions in the prefrontal cortex which overlap the brain regions monitoring some advanced functions such as attention memory and emotion Moreover an exploration to the nature of the test anxiety may be conducive to understand the gum chewing effect as well Relying on abundant evidences obtained from test anxiety researches cognitive interference has been regarded as a key ingredient of test anxiety Self blame self doubt self denigrating self depre cating worry about test results and concern about others judgment are some typical labels to represent the interfering cognitions The cognitive style of test anxiety may involve some biases in the attentional process that is anxious individuals automatically have their attention captured by self threatening stimulus 7 It s possible that gum chewing acting like a distrac tion assists students direct their attention away from the self centered thinking and relieves themselves from the anxiety symptoms However for the students with high trait anxiety their attentional resources seem too obstinate to be relocated High trait anxious students tended to perceive the test situations as more threatening and frightening than students low in trait anxiety and experienced more intense levels of state anxiety when taking tests Therefore chewing gum as an easily accessible and low in cost anti test anxi ety tool can be applied effectively to the students with low and medium trait anxiety but to the students with high trait anxiety it appears not powerful enough and need to combine with other interventions Although great attention was paid to developing a methodologically tenable study results should be in terpreted in light of some limitations Adopting pro cess oriented view into test anxiety researchers have conceptualized this phenomenon in terms of a learn ing testing cycle which includes three phases test preparation test performance and test reflection 8 The effect of gum chewing on test anxiety in the study is intentionally confined to test preparation phase due to the fact that it s not allowed for the students to eat anything during the time