Early vigilance and improved processing efficiency to the test-related target in test anxiety: evidence from the visual search task and eye-movements

Attention bias contributes to the development and maintenance of test anxiety. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of attention bias, such as the relative contributions of the top-down and bottom-up cognitive processes. The bottom-up mechanism selects stimuli based on their physical salience, and regardless of the intention of observers. Besides, it remains unclear whether the attention bias in the test anxiety would extend in the visual search task in which numerous stimuli compete for attentional resources. Thus, the present research investigated these issues by combining the visual search task with eye-tracking techniques. The test-related pictures with varying threat levels may be the visual search target in the task-relevant condition, and be one of the distractors in the task-irrelevant condition. Thirty high and Thirty low test-anxious participants were required to attend a visual search task. Our results found that the low test-anxious group showed greater first fixation proportion and shorter dwell time towards test-related distractor within the target-absent condition. But we cannot find any effects of the high test-anxious group in the task-irrelevant condition. However, both groups showed a faster response and shorter target processing time of the test-related target, and the high test-anxious group had faster first fixation latency and greater first fixation proportion towards the high-threatening test-related target. These results suggested that the high test-anxious individuals showed early vigilance and improved processing efficiency towards the test-related target in a visual search task. Our findings indicated that ABs among numerous stimuli in test anxiety was not a completely bottom-up process.