Processing the peripheral distractor in test anxiety: the effects of perceptual load and cognitive load

Test anxiety theory is believed to increase distraction from task-irrelevant stimuli. However, it is unclear whether the test-anxious individuals will show distraction to the peripheral distractor. Load theory suggested that perceptual and cognitive loads could manipulate attentional demands during distractor processing. Besides, how increasing the perceptual and cognitive load will affect the distraction in test anxiety remains explored. The present research aimed to test these issues by combining the eye-tracking technique and letter discrimination task with varying types of the peripheral distractor in high-test anxious (HTA) vs. low-test anxious (LTA) individuals. Experiment 1 manipulated the perceptual load by adjusting the difficulty of the task, and Experiment 2 increased cognitive load by adding a backward counting task based on the procedure of Experiment 1. Consequently, HTA individuals had longer response times (RTs) in the test-related distractor condition than in the non-distractor condition of fast-response trials in both experiments, suggesting that the HTA group showed distraction to the test-related distractor within fast-response trials. Besides, the HTA group had fewer fixations than low test-anxious (LTA) individuals in Experiment 1, suggesting that the HTA group may keep hypervigilance by maintaining a broad distribution of attention. These results support that distraction in test anxiety is associated with unspecific hypervigilance and specific inhibition deficits.