Anxiety and verbal learning in typically developing primary school children: Less efficient but equally effective

Despite evidence that high levels of anxiety can impair Working Memory (WM) functioning, little is known about how anxiety is associated with classroom learning activities, which make high demands on verbal WM.

To investigate the association between anxiety and learning on a task which makes high demands on verbal WM.

Participants were 119 typically developing, Australian elementary school children (M age = 9.25 years; SD = 7.6 months).

In individual testing sessions, measures of trait anxiety (Spence Childhood Anxiety Scales) and state anxiety (Visual Analogue scale) were made. The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which makes similar demands on WM to many classroom activities, was administered.

Neither trait nor state anxiety alone was associated with mean recall across trials, however their interaction showed a significant effect. In children high on both measures of anxiety, learning followed a different trajectory. They learned more slowly on the first three trials than less anxious peers, then caught up on the remaining trials. While their mean recall scores across trials were significantly lower than those of less anxious peers, they retained as many words on the delayed learning trial.

In a group of typically developing children, learning on the early, more demanding learning trials of a verbal learning task was vulnerable to heightened anxiety. However, the extra opportunities to learn on later trials enabled more anxious children to learn as much as their less anxious peers. While they learnt less efficiently, they learnt equally effectively.