Effectiveness of Attention Training on Attention Control, Focused Attention and Dispersed Attention in Girl Students with Test Anxiety

Background and Test anxiety is a state of general anxiety and it includes cognitive, physiologic and behavioral responses related to the fear of failure that affects students at the time of their academic performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of attention training on attention control, focused attention and dispersed attention in female students with exam anxiety.
The research method is experimental with pretest-posttest design with control group. Thus a sample of 30 female high school students with anxiety test in Isfahan during the academic year of 2015-2016 selected by multistage cluster sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The tools used in this study were anxiety questionnaire (Sarason, 1984) and measurement instrument of focused and dispersed attention (Yazdi, 2011) and attention control questionnaire (Diri Beri & Reed, 2002). Before intervention, both groups were evaluated. Then, the experimental group received educational intervention during 8 sessions in 2 months. Data were analyzed using covariance analysis.
The results showed that attention training has a significant effect on attention control, focused attention and dispersed attention (P Therefore, according to the results of this study, attention training can be used to increase the attention and concentration of students with test anxiety.