Self-controlled goal setting and trait anxiety on learning to climb the Bachman ladder

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance on climbing Bachman’s ladder rungs in adolescents with high and low levels of trait anxiety (TA) who self-set their goals. The 40 participants who took part in the experiment were selected from a primary sample of 465 adolescents. Two groups were formed (high TA and low TA) and the task consisted of climbing the rungs of the Bachman’s ladder. The design was comprised of four experimental phases: 1) acquisition (15 blocks of 10 trials), 2) immediate transfer (one block of 10 trials); 3) delayed transfer (one block of 10 trials), 4) retention, (one block of 10 trials). The analyses of variance indicated significant effects for the main factor “block” in acquisition; the performance in the initial blocks was worse than in the last blocks. No group differences were detected on either acquisition or transfer and retention. Thus, our findings suggest that the practice undertaken through an active engagement of the learner via self-setting of goals enhanced the performance of all participants during acquisition. The lack of differences in performance between high and low levels of TA was probably due to the offset caused by the self-setting of goals.