All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but tests may also have unintended, negative consequences (Messick, 1989). The issue is particularly important in the case of large-scale standardized tests, such as Australia's "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN), the…

As validity pertains to test use rather than the test itself, using a test for unintended purposes requires a new validation program using additional evidence from relevant sources. This small-scale study contributes to the validation of the use of originally academic language tests--the International English Language Testing System and the Test…

Research on the relationship between affect and cognition in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) brings an important dimension to our understanding of how learning occurs and how it can be facilitated. Emotions are crucial to learning, but their nature, the conditions under which they occur, and their exact impact on learning for different…

The purpose of this experiment was to relate two bodies of research on anxiety: test anxiety, or anxiety proneness specific to the testing situation, and trait-state anxiety. The author hypothesized that state anxiety--anxiety not tied to any particular situation but aroused in "any" situation--should be highly related to test anxiety during a…

The results of this experiment clearly indicate that the presence of induced anxiety in a testing situation can depress the subject's level of performance on the WISC. (Author)

This paper reports two experiments whose purpose was to relate two bodies of research on anxiety: test and trait-state anxiety. It was reasoned that state anxiety measures obtained in an evaluation testing condition should be more similar to test anxiety than state anxiety measures obtained in non-evaluative situations, such as a game in Study I…

The findings of Masling and Harris were felt to violate the principle of parsimony and to cast unwarranted asperisons on the students who served as Es. The data were reinterpreted as showing that the male students were simply applying sound clinical principles in an attempt to do as well as possible on the task given them. (Author)

Presents cases illustrating the negative effects of intelligence testing on children. (DW)

Following an orientation session in which test-anxious students were instructed in the theory and methods of desensitization, eighteen ISU undergraduates applied for a desensitization and counseling program for test-taking anxiety. All students committed themselves to attend seven weekly meetings and to practice daily the relaxation exercises at…

The present study and a replication investigated the effects of personality variables on test scores obtained under Answer Every Item (AEI), Do Not Guess (DNG) and Coombs' Type (CT) directions. Subjects were administered a dominance scale and extreme scorers randomly assigned to one of the types of directions, then randomly assigned to complete an…

Responses on both the state and trait scales of the State-Trait Anxiety (STAI) Inventory were examined under two conditions. The first condition presented a simulated real-life situation containing competitive and evaluative cues without directly suggesting faking and asked subjects to complete the STAI. After an intervening task, the STAI was…

This study sought to assess the effects of psychological warm-up on the verbal creative thinking abilities of first-grade children. The subjects were 96 black first-grade children enrolled in two schools in Athens and Atlanta, Georgia. Both schools are located in poor neighborhoods. Children were randomly assigned to control, physical warm-up, and…

This study examined the effectiveness of systematic desensitization for reducing the anxiety of highly test-anxious students who differed in their level of generalized anxiety. (Author)

Hypotheses that efficacy of systematic desensitization could be attributed to anxlety reduction as a result of relaxation training, to extinction of nonreinforced fear responses, or to operation of placebo factors were tested as alternatives to counterconditioning hypothesis. Test anxiety reduction was found only for subjects given relaxation…

It has been the experience of most adult basic education teachers that their students are apprehensive about taking tests. The study evaluates the effects of training adult basic education teachers in behavioral attending skills. Two basic questions were investigated: (1) Would the training of instructors in the use of behavior attending skills…