Latent Profiles of Academic Anxiety and Working Memory in Adults with Varying Dyslexia-Related Risk

This study examined whether adults with varying levels of dyslexia-related risk show distinct profiles of academic anxiety and working memory functioning. Dyslexia-related risk was assessed with the corrected Chinese Adult Reading History Questionnaire (Chinese-ARHQ). Latent profile analysis was conducted using reading anxiety, mathematics anxiety, a digit-span working memory composite, and operation span as profile indicators. Corrected Chinese-ARHQ scores were then compared across the retained profiles as an external variable, and a sensitivity analysis was conducted in the elevated dyslexia-related risk subsample defined by Chinese-ARHQ scores above 0.36. A four-profile solution was retained: Low Anxiety-Average Cognition, High Anxiety-High Cognition, Very Low Verbal Working Memory, and High Anxiety-Low Cognition. The coexistence of high-anxiety profiles with different levels of cognitive performance suggests that, within the specific profile distribution of this sample, elevated academic anxiety was not consistently accompanied by uniformly lower working memory performance. Corrected Chinese-ARHQ scores did not differ significantly across profiles, suggesting that the identified emotion-cognition patterns were not closely aligned with retrospective reading-difficulty severity in this sample. Overall, the findings provide preliminary evidence that current academic anxiety and working memory performance may form distinguishable configurations among adults with varying dyslexia-related risk, while also highlighting the need for replication with independent and clinically characterized samples.