Anxiety and inattention as predictors of achievement in early elementary school children

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the relations among anxiety, inattention, and math/reading achievement, as well as the mediating/moderating role of inattention in the anxiety-achievement association both concurrently and longitudinally. Participants included 161 ethnically diverse children (aged 6–8) and their teachers. At the middle and end of first grade (approximately 5 months apart), students completed measures of anxiety and achievement while their teachers completed a measure of inattention. For the concurrent analyses, greater harm avoidance anxiety was associated with better attention, which was in turn related to better achievement. For the longitudinal analyses, mid-year inattention interacted with harm avoidance and separation anxiety to predict end of year reading fluency. For those rated as more attentive, greater separation anxiety symptoms were associated with decreased fluency performance while greater harm avoidance symptoms were associated with increased performance. Findings were discussed in terms of the importance of considering socioemotional variables in the study of children's academic achievement and the potential utility of early anxiety prevention/intervention programs, especially for children experiencing academic difficulties who also show internalizing behaviors.

Keywords:

• anxiety
• inattention
• attention
• academic achievement
• learning

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by Award Numbers K08HD058020 (PI, Grills-Taquechel) and P50HD052117 (PI, Fletcher), from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development or the National Institutes of Health. Special thanks to Amy Barth for her assistance with data collection and management.

Notes

1. Detailed information available at http://www.texasldcenter.org/.

2. See note (1) above.

3. Analyses were also conducted controlling for IQ using the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test- 2 composite score (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2004) and including gender as a moderator. Since the overall conclusions did not change with any of these analyses, the models were reduced to that described.