Thinking Styles Underlying the Cognitive Judgements of Exam Anxiety amongst University Students of Engineering

Abstract

This research study explored the systematic thinking modes underlying test anxiety in 706 engineering students through an experiment centred on the cognitive algebra paradigm. The participants had to read 36 experimental scenarios that narrated an imaginary academic assessment situation one by one and then judge the level of anxiety they experienced in response to the scenario read. The results indicated that the level of evaluative anxiety varies depending on gender, and there are three distinct patterns of emotional and cognitive processing to deal with academic assessment situations according to the anxiety intensity. However, there are no differences in the cognitive function of information integration to judge situations that produce evaluative anxiety. These results imply that there is a possible connection between the anxiety level and the cognitive mechanisms to judge test situations. This finding indicates that cognitive algebra is an effective method to identify the cognitive processing style that underlies test anxiety.