Book Description

This article examines recent research on anxiety, in terms of a research model proposed after reviewing the effects of anxiety on learning from instructions. The model specifies the points at which anxiety on learning can be expected to affect learning. It is assumed that since learning is a process that is essentially cognitively mediated, anxiety can affect learning only indirectly, by affecting the cognitive process mediating learning at various stages. The model separates the instructional process into the three classic information-processing components: input, processing, and output. The input component denotes presentation of instruction to students, processing represents all of the operations students use to encode, organize, and store input, and output designates student performance on any evaluative instrument after instruction. It was hypothesized that there are three points at which anxiety could affect learning from instructions most directly: in preprocessing, during processing, and after processing, but just before output. Keywords: Cognition, Reprints.