Tense of Psychological Distancing Self Talk and Test Performance Among GT High School Students

Test taking is ubiquitous in academic life. Often, a student’s desire to perform well in these evaluative situations leads them to experience test-anxiety. However, test-anxiety has been repeatedly correlated with reduced test performance. Research suggests that reappraisal interventions promote the reduction of test anxiety which may result in improved test performance. But can linguistic tense mediate the effect of these interventions? If so, are these interventions helpful for GT students for whom test anxiety is a significant concern? This intervention study tested whether reading a message containing a type of reappraisal technique, objective psychological distancing, in a certain linguistic tense could reduce test anxiety and improve test performance for high school GT algebra students. Two hours before taking an exam, students read one of three messages: a first-person distancing, a third-person distancing, or a control message. There existed a slight improvement in student test performance from the control condition to the distancing conditions, yet this trend was not statistically significant.