Sleep Time, Test Anxiety and Aggressiveness In

Annssiieeddaadd yy

Essttrrééss ISSN: 1134-7937

2013, 19(1), 71-82

SLEEP TIME, TEST ANXIETY AND AGGRESSIVENESS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Antonio Fernández-Castillo

University of Granada. Spain

Resumen: Los objetivos de este trabajo fueron, en primer lugar, determinar si la ansiedad en situación previa a un examen puede variar en función de las horas de sueño durante la noche anterior. En se-gundo lugar, examinar si dicha ansiedad se relacio-na con la presencia de agresividad y, en tercer lu-gar, determinar si esta agresividad podría ser con-siderada como una variable relevante en la relación entre privación parcial de sueño y la ansiedad en los exámenes. Adicionalmente se estudió el papel del género en las variables objeto de estudio. La muestra de estudio estaba compuesta por 137 estu-diantes universitarios que participaron cuando iban a comenzar un examen. Nuestros resultados con-firman la asociación entre ansiedad previa a un examen y privación de sueño durante la noche an-terior, así como entre agresividad y ansiedad a los exámenes. No se observaron efectos de interacción, pero la reducción de horas de sueño y la agresivi-dad se mostraron como buenos predictores de an-siedad a los exámenes. No se encontraron diferen-cias significativas en horas de sueño, agresividad ni en ansiedad entre hombres y mujeres, pero si apa-recieron diferencias en ansiedad en función de las horas de sueño.

Palabras clave: Agresividad, Horas de sueño, An-siedad a los exámenes, Diferencias de género.

Abstract: The goals of this study were, firstly, to de-termine whether pre-test anxiety is associated with differences in hours of sleep during the previous night; secondly, to examine whether such anxiety is related to the presence of aggressiveness; and, third-ly, to determine whether aggressiveness may be con-sidered a relevant variable in the possible relation-ship between partial sleep reduction and test anxiety. In addition, differences as a function of gender were analyzed in the target variables. The study sample was made up of 137 undergraduate students before taking an exam. Our results confirm the association between sleep reduction the previous night and test anxiety as well as that between aggressiveness and test anxiety. No interaction effects were observed, but sleep reduction and aggressiveness were good predictors of test anxiety. No significant gender dif-ferences were observed in hours of sleep the previ-ous night, aggressiveness and test-anxiety, but there were differences in anxiety as a function of the hours of sleep. Key words: Aggressiveness, Hours of sleep, Test anxiety, Gender differences.

Título: Horas de sueño, ansiedad a los exámenes y agresividad en estudiantes universitarios

Traditionally, research has differentiat-ed between state anxiety and trait anxiety. In the words of Spielberger, Gorsuch, and Lushene (2002), state anxiety refers to a transitory emotional condition of the hu-man organism that is generated as a result *Dirigir la correspondencia a: Antonio Fernández-Castillo Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación Campus de Cartuja S/n 18071 Granada. Spain Tel.: 34958249037 E-mail: [email protected] © Copyright 2013: de los Editores de Ansiedad y Estrés

of exposure to a specific situation or stimu-lation. Trait anxiety, in turn, refers to a propensity to manifest anxiety that is rela-tively stable in individuals and makes them tend to perceive situations as more or less threatening.

A situation that has long attracted the attention of researchers interested in anxie-ty has been its links with situations of aca-demic evaluation, particularly concerning tests and examinations (Stober, 2004). Alt-hough some moderate levels of anxiety have been associated with better academic performance (Fernández-Castillo & Gutiér-


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rez, 2009), most students perceive tests as being unpleasant and adverse. An examina-tion or test situation fulfils all the condi-tions one would expect to generate emo-tional perturbation, constituting a threaten-ing situation in which the future prospects of students are often at stake. Examinations are perhaps the evaluative procedure that is most commonly used at all levels of the education process. According to some au-thors, high levels of pre-test anxiety could affect 15-25% of all students (Escalona & Miguel-Tobal, 1996). Some authors sug-gest that there is a significant population of college students with a worrying level of anxiety during exams but the data are in-conclusive on the impact on academic per-formance (Álvarez, Aguilar, & Lorenzo, 2012).

There seems to be a consensus regard-ing the efficacy of action taken to reduce student anxiety (Afzal, Afzal, Siddique, & Naqvi, 2012; Serrano, Escolar & Delgado, 2002), although opinions are mixed as to whether anxiety reduction actually im-proves academic performance. Neverthe-less, it should be noted that although anxie-ty and other related constructs could affect performance, it seems clear that academic abilities may better account for students' good performance (Musch & Bröder, 1999).

Some studies on emotional disorders, focused on gender differences, have found higher levels of anxiety among female uni-versity students than their male counter-parts. Anxiety however, does not seem to affect their academic performance; in fact, men are academically less successful and present a higher dropout rate than women (Masson et al., 2004). The literature typi-cally shows higher test anxiety levels in women than in men (Bandalos, Yates, & Thorndike-Christ, 1995; Zeidner, 1990). An explanation for this difference is that test anxiety levels in females may reflect a tendency to perceive evaluative situations

as threatening rather than challenging (Cas-sady & Hohnson, 2002; Kurosawa & Harachiewicz, 1995). However, not all studies coincide in this result because, de-pending on how test anxiety is assessed, some of them have found no gender differ-ences (Hong & Karstensson, 2002).

Despite the fact that anxiety frequently affects young people in academic contexts, women seem to suffer more emotional and behavioural alterations of an internal type (e.g., depression), unlike men, who tend to present external manifestations (e.g., atten-tion seeking, aggressiveness or illicit be-haviour). This external manifestation could be associated to a greater extent with exam-ination failure, which might account, in part, for the higher rate of academic failure observed among male students (Lozano & García, 2000).

Some authors have related pre-test anx-iety with diverse variables, such as suscep-tibility to distraction, exam-specific expec-tations, examination stakes, metacognitive beliefs (Keogh, Bond, French, Richards, & Davis, 2004; Putwain, 2008; Spada, Nikcevic, Moneta, & Ireson, 2006; Zohar, 1998), and different ways of coping. In fact, anxiety is only one of the emotions present in this kind of situation and, more-over, it is not the most important one, ac-cording to other studies. As stated by Pekrun, Goetz, Perry, Kramer, Hochstadt and Molfenter (2004), different emotions, such as test-related joy, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, shame and hopelessness, as well as different components within emo-tions, are intensively present or altered dur-ing exams. A comparative study (Cunha & Paiva, 2012) revealed that adolescents with high test anxiety score significantly higher in negative forms of self-criticism and so-cial anxiety, and lower in self-reassurance, acceptance and mindfulness when com-pared to adolescents with low test anxiety.

Sleep time and test anxiety

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It seems clear that "test-anxious stu-dents are generally higher in trait anxiety, tend to perceive examinations as more dangerous or threatening than individuals low in trait anxiety, and experience more intense levels of state anxiety when taking tests" (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995, p. 6). It therefore appears that trait anxiety also cor-relates positively with test anxiety (Onyeizugbo, 2010). According to other studies, the perception of an examination as a threatening situation could be related to fear of failure and to the individual's achievement motivation. Therefore, the re-lation between test anxiety and constructs associated with emotional alteration and threat is logical (Putwain, 2009).

There is also empirical evidence of the presence of aggressiveness in anxiety-provoking situations and, specifically, within educational and social contexts and during childhood (Loukas, Paulos & Rob-inson, 2005; Silverman & Treffers, 2001). It is common for anxiety-related reactions to be associated with aggressiveness in sit-uations perceived as threatening, which could be especially applicable to the case of examinations or that of low-performing students. Some researchers have also found that aggressiveness is present to a higher degree among students with greater aca-demic difficulties (Masson et al., 2004). According to some works, general aggres-siveness reaches higher levels in young men than in women (Kristensson & Öh-lund, 2005) and, although these differences are global, in some specific variables such as anger, men and women are not different from each other (Buss & Perry, 1992).

Some studies have found evidence that, even when aggressiveness levels are not excessively high, there is some degree of aggressiveness before academic examina-tions. Furthermore, before taking an exam higher levels of aggressiveness have been associated with higher levels of anxiety (Fernández-Castillo, 2009).

A common practice among many stu-dents before an examination is to reduce their hours of sleep during the preceding days and nights, in order to dedicate more time to studying the subject matter of the examination. It is even fairly common for students to spend the entire night before the examination without sleeping, or with a significant reduction in sleep time, in order to study. Sleep reduction and deprivation have traditionally been associated with worse performance and with the onset of emotional alterations. Although some au-thors reported that partial sleep loss (i.e., under 3 hours) did not adversely affect stu-dents’ performance on the vigilance task or on the class exam in children (Horn & Dollinger, 1989), sleep and relaxation were students’ most frequently used measures to overcome exam anxiety (Afzal et al., 2012).

Thus, several researchers have reported an association between sleep reduction and deprivation, on the one hand, and cognitive and behavioural impairment, mood altera-tions, reductions in alertness or general arousal levels and young children’s school performance (Engle-Friedman et al., 2003; Gómez, Chóliz, & Carbonell, 2000; Scott, McNaughton, & Polman, 2006), on the other hand. Specifically, some authors found that lower levels of sleep were asso-ciated with higher levels of aggressiveness before examinations (Fernández-Castillo, 2009). Nevertheless, few studies have fo-cused on the degree to which sleep depriva-tion might be related to the anxiety experi-enced in a pre-test situation. In the case of early childhood, there seems to be an evi-dent and significant role of sleep in aca-demic performance (Fallone, Acebo, Seif-er, & Carskadon, 2005), with sleep reduc-tion having negative effects on attention and possibly on other behavioural aspects, even among children with no past history of such problems. These effects may also be present in older students. Some studies


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have indicated that sleeping less than 6 hours can have negative consequences on endocrine functioning or on quality of life (Gottlieb et al., 2005; Marín, Franco, Vi-naccia, Tobón, & Sandín, 2008).

Sleep is an important component, there-fore, in the accomplishment of daily tasks, and its overall quality seems to be a crucial aspect with implications for the perfor-mance of complex abilities and tasks. As concerns the duration and quality of sleep, some studies (Sierra, Jiménez-Navarro & Martín-Ortiz, 2002) have found no signifi-cant differences between men and women in university populations, with around 30% of the students sampled suffering from poor-quality sleep.

Although there is some tradition on the study of test anxiety, few studies have ana-lyzed the relationship between sleep depri-vation the night before the exam and test anxiety in university students. This study also presents as a novelty the analysis of the role that aggressiveness during exams could play in the above relationship.

In the present study, the initial hypothe-ses were, firstly, that reduced hours of sleep during the night before an examina-tion would be associated with greater anxi-ety during the test. Specifically, we ex-pected to find differences in test-anxiety among students who slept more or less than 6 hours the previous night. Secondly, con-cerning gender differences, we expected to find higher levels of test-anxiety in females than in males and no differences in aggres-siveness levels between males and females. With regard to the amount of sleep the night before the test, we did not expect any gender differences either. Thirdly, we ex-pected aggressiveness to be a variable as-sociated with self-reported anxiety during the examination. Specifically, we expected higher levels of aggressiveness to be asso-ciated with, and to predict, higher levels of test-anxiety. Finally, we hypothesized that

aggressiveness would play an important role in the expected association between sleep reduction and test anxiety. Method Participants

The participants were 137 undergradu-ate students aged 19-28, with an average age of 21.15 years (SD = 2.14). Of the par-ticipants, 92 (67.2%) were female and 45 (32.8%) were male. All participants were students at the Faculty of Educational Sci-ences (University of Granada). All of them participated in the study just before the start of a final examination, when they were already seated in the examination room. Most of the students in this faculty are female and, moreover, many male stu-dents refused to participate in the study. Because of this, there is a great predomi-nance of women in our sample. Instruments

Anxiety. All the participants completed the latest Spanish version of the Spiel-berger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger et al., 2002). The STAI (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1983) was designed to measure both state anxiety and trait anxiety, with two separate ques-tionnaires. The Spanish version of the State Anxiety form of the STAI was given to participants in order to measure their anxie-ty immediately before taking an exam. This form consists of 20 items which are rated on a 4-point scale.

Internal consistency of the Spanish ver-sion of the State Anxiety form in the origi-nal study was high: the Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR-20) was between .90 and .93, and the split-half reliability was .94 for the state form (Spielberger et al., 2002). Its convergent validity with other measures of anxiety was very good (Spielberger, 1977; Spielberger, Gonzalez, Taylor, Algaze, & Anton, 1978). Internal consistency of the


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STAI in the present sample was excellent (Cronbach’s alpha = .93).

Aggressiveness. Levels of aggressive-ness were assessed by means of the abbre-viated Spanish version (García-León et al., 2002; Morales-Vives, Codorniu-Raga, & Vigil-Colet, 2005; Rodríguez, Fernández, & Gómez, 2002) of the Aggression Ques-tionnaire (AQ; Buss & Perry, 1992). This version is a 29-item Likert-type instrument with response options ranging from 1 (rarely) to 5 (often), designed to measure the different dimensions of the hostility / anger / aggression construct (Vigil-Colet, Lorenzo-Seva, Codorniu-Raga & Morales, 2005). The instrument is one of those most commonly used in studies of aggressive behaviour. The version implemented in our study has very satisfactory psychometric properties in Spanish populations. For ex-ample, it produced an internal consistency of .82, split-half reliability of .85, test-retest reliability (with a 5-week interval) of .81 (García-León et al., 2002), and an alpha value of .88 (Andreu, Peña, & Graña, 2002). In this study, the internal consisten-cy was good (α = .86).

Hours of sleep: The participants were asked to write down how many hours they had slept the night before the examination, counting from when they actually fell asleep until the moment they woke up. Procedure

The test situations were selected ran-domly and, in each case, the professor in-troduced the evaluator to the students and briefly explained the purpose of his/her presence in the exam room, the importance of sincerity in the answers given, the ne-cessity for a detailed reading and compre-hension of every item, and the anonymous nature of participation. The time taken to complete the questionnaires was approxi-mately ten minutes. Participation was vol-untary and students who did not want to fill in the questionnaires remained seated at

their desks waiting for the start of the ex-amination. Results

Initial descriptive analysis shows that, in relation to anxiety, students’ mean score was 29.92 (SD = 11.57) with a range of 6-60. Regarding aggressiveness, the mean score was 64.66 (SD = 13.80), ranging from 37 to 113. Lastly, students achieved a mean of 6.44 sleeping hours the night be-fore (SD = 1.56), with a range of 0 to 10 hours; 29% had slept 5 hours or less and 50.4% of them had slept 6 hours or less.

An initial correlation analysis enabled us to determine the association between the variables in the light of the hypotheses pre-viously established. Thus, the amount of sleep time the night before the exam was significantly and negatively correlated with the presence of test anxiety (r = -.46, p < .001), whereas there was a positive associa-tion between anxiety and aggressiveness (r = .29, p = .00).

A t-test for independent samples was performed to identify possible differences in test anxiety, hours of sleep the night be-fore, and aggressiveness, depending on par-ticipants’ gender. Table 1 shows the com-parisons of means.

No significant differences were found between men and women in any of the var-iables under study.

To determine more precisely the rela-tion between test anxiety and hours of sleep the previous night (now considering this variable as a quantitative one), firstly, analysis of variance and a t-test for inde-pendent samples were carried out, and re-gression analysis was applied to identify a possible linear relation between these two variables (Table 2).

The ANOVA revealed significant dif-ferences in test anxiety as a function of the amount of sleep the previous night, F(8,


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126) = 5.88 p < .001, with a generalized decrease in anxiety accompanying greater amounts of sleep the previous night, as shown in Figure 1.

In order to determine specific differ-ences in anxiety among participants who had slept more or less than 6 hours the night before, the sample was divided into two groups as a function of this criterion. These groups were established taking into

account that less than 6 hours of sleep is associated with more psychological and health interferences. Next, analyses of mean differences were performed, showing that participants who had slept less than 6 hours presented higher levels of test anxie-ty than those who had slept more than 6 hours, as shown in Table 1.

A hierarchical regression evaluated whether the prediction of test-anxiety im-

Table 1. T-Test Results by Gender and Amount of Sleep the Previous Night

Analysis of gender differences Males Females t-value Test anxiety

M SD M SD t (137 ) = 1.80, p = .07 27.24 11.47 31.11 11.56

Hours sleeping M SD M SD t (137) = .65, p = .52 6.33 1.75 6.52 1.46

Aggressiveness M SD M SD t (137 ) = 1.21, p = .23 67.02 15.45 63.92 12.99

Analysis by hours of sleep Group of participants with less

than 6 hours of sleep Group of participants with 6

hours or more of sleep

Test anxiety n M SD n M SD t (1,133 ) = 5.45, p < .001 39 37.59 10.25 96 26.68 10.66

Hours of sleep the night before1098765430

Mea

n An

xiet

y

60

50

40

30

20

10

F(8,126) = 5.88, p < .001

Figure 1. Test-anxiety as a function of quantity of sleep the previous night.


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proved when the hours of sleep the previ-ous night and aggressiveness are consid-ered beyond the effect of the interaction be-tween these two variables. As shown in Table 3, the hours of sleep entered in the first step explained a significant 21% of the test-anxiety score variance (p < .001). Nev-ertheless, aggressiveness contributed 6% (p < .001), increasing R2 when entered in the second model. Hours of sleep was used as a continuous variable in this analysis.

We propose an alternative model in-cluding hours of sleep, aggressiveness, and the interaction of these variables. Hours of sleep the previous night and aggressiveness are good predictors of anxiety, although aggressiveness does not modulate the rela-tion between hours of sleep and test anxie-ty.

Although the two models present an ad-equate degree of predictive efficacy, the latter one is preferable to the simple model because its R2 value is higher, although the interaction is not significant in the model. Discussion

The first of our descriptive results re-veals a generalized reduction in sleep time the night before the examination, with 29% of participants having slept 5 hours or less

that night; sleep reduction, therefore, is rel-atively common in the sample population studied. Half of the students who took the examination had slept less than recom-mended by clinical criteria (Gottlieb et al., 2005; Marín et al., 2008).

The results also indicate that partici-pants’ average rate of anxiety was high. The mean (29.92) is above the 70th percen-tile, according to the scale of interpretation provided by Spielberger et al. (2002). Re-garding aggressiveness, the sample’s mean (64.66) is below the means reported in val-idation studies (75.7) (García-León et al., 2002). Therefore, it may be assumed that participants’ levels of aggression were middle-low.

With respect to the first hypothesis, re-sults show that a reduction in the hours slept the night before an examination seems to be associated with greater anxiety prior to taking an exam. Moreover, the as-sociation between test anxiety and aggres-siveness in this situation is also significant. These results confirm the initial assump-tions and are coherent with studies of ag-gressiveness associated with anxiety in other situations (del Barrio, Mestre & Tur, 2004; Fernández-Castillo, 2009; Loukas et al., 2005; Silverman & Treffers, 2001).

Regarding the second hypothesis, the

Table 2. Hierarchical Linear Regression Analysis Results

Dependent variable: Test-anxiety Model Variable R R2 Adjusted

R2 F Beta p

1 Hours of sleep the previous night

.46 .22 .21 F(1, 133) = 36.40;

p < .001

-.46 .00

2

Hours of sleep the previous night,

.53 .28 .27 F(2, 132) =

25.79; p < .001

-.44 .00

Aggressiveness .26 .00

Variable excluded

Interaction: Sleep x Aggressiveness

-.15 .71


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means-comparison tests revealed no signif-icant differences between men and women in test anxiety, hours of sleep the previous night, or aggressiveness. The non-existence of differences between men and women in anxiety confounds our initial hypothesis, but should be discussed in relation to the results of other authors. In fact, whereas some have reported significant differences in this aspect (Masson et al., 2004; Stober, 2004), other authors, when studying other emotional alterations, have found no such differences (Fernández-Castillo & López-Naranjo, 2006). Our data show that women report more anxiety than men, but this dif-ference is marginally nonsignificant (p = .07). For our population, it seems clear that, in a situation as conducive to anxiety as an examination, men and women suffer equal-ly in this respect. This issue deserves more attention in future research and also leads us to suppose that the strategies adopted by our population for coping with anxiety are no more successful for women than for men, in contrast to the results from other studies (Stober, 2004). Some studies that have found significant gender differences, with female students presenting higher lev-els of test anxiety than males (Stober, 2004), have provided other explanations for these differences. In this sense, there are dissimilarities in men’s and women’s strategies for coping with pre-test anxiety; women seem to be better prepared for this, being more task-oriented and more inclined to seek social support (Stober, 2004). The-se strategies seem to be highly useful to re-duce this kind of situational anxiety. Re-garding coping, other studies have reported significant differences in coping styles ac-cording to anxiety levels (Piemontesi, Heredia, Furlan, Sánchez, & Martínez, 2012). Still other results indicate that stu-dents with higher test anxiety use rehearsal more frequently and elaboration and criti-cal thinking less frequently than students

with less anxiety (Furlan, Rosas, Heredia, Illbele, & Martínez, 2012).

Nevertheless, given the close margin of absence of significance and the imbalance in gender distribution of the sample, our re-sults could be questioned. With a view to the large quantity of studies that have found these differences, we think that if the sample had been balanced with regard to gender, we might have found a different re-sult. It would be interesting to further ana-lyze the role that gender plays in this topic and the hours students habitually sleep dur-ing the academic course, and these are some of our recommendations for future studies.

With regard to aggressiveness, although various studies have found higher levels in men than in women (Kristensson & Öh-lund, 2005) — and this motivated our ini-tial hypothesis — aggressiveness associat-ed with a specific situation such as an ex-amination may not produce gender differ-ences, in line with other studies that have not found gender differences when measur-ing specific characteristics of aggressive-ness (Buss & Perry, 1992). Likewise, the fact that we found no differences between men and women in hours of sleep the night before the examination is in accordance with other studies that also found no gender differences in this variable (Sierra et al., 2002).

An important result of this work has been to find the significant relationship be-tween reduced sleep time and increased anxiety. As the t-test indicated, differences were found between the students who had slept more than 6 hours and those who had slept 6 hours or less. In the present case, the quantity of sleep is a variable that, in its own right, is related to anxiety. These re-sults are in accordance with the studies that have found higher levels of emotional al-teration and cognitive dysfunction and poorer performance in people with sleep


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reduction (Engle-Friedman et al., 2003; Gómez et al., 2000; Scott et al., 2006).

The regression model that best fits the data is the one that includes hours of sleep and aggressiveness, although there is no in-teraction between the two variables. More hours of sleep obtained the night before and low aggressiveness are both associated with less test anxiety. Taking into account the two variables studied, sleep reduction is the variable that best predicted anxiety in test situations.

The association found between aggres-siveness and test anxiety coincides with previous studies (Fernández-Castillo, 2009). Likewise, anxiety has been associat-ed with emotional alteration and perception of threat (Loukas et al., 2005; Putwain, 2009). The presence of worry, emotional alteration and threat could make the onset of aggressiveness in an examination situa-tion more understandable. Nevertheless, this line of theoretical relationships needs to be further investigated in the case of test anxiety.

Perhaps future studies could take into account other sleep-related variables, aside from its duration, for example, its quality, in the light of the importance of this sleep dimension (Sierra et al., 2002).

A possible limitation of our study re-sides in the fact that we were unable to use a specific scale for assessing test anxiety, such as the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) (Spielberger, 1977; Spielberger et al., 1978). The reason for this is that, when de-signing our study, no assessment instru-ments had been validated yet in a Spanish population. We have observed a prelimi-nary use of the TAI in some studies, but data is still lacking concerning its reliabil-ity or validity for Spanish samples (Camu-ñas, Cano-Vindel, Pérez & González, 2002). Faced with the question of whether to use an instrument of uncertain reliability, without having been properly adapted to a

Spanish population, or to use a less specific instrument, but one with recognized relia-bility and validity, we decided to apply the latter, that is, the STAI (Spielberger et al., 2002). It should be noted, moreover, that this instrument presents a very good con-vergent validity with the TAI (Spielberger et al., 1978), and that, basically, the state form is well suited for assessing anxiety in specific situations.

Our results should be taken with pre-caution, given the large number of varia-bles that could be influencing anxiety. Fu-ture studies could examine the role played by variables such as substance use (stimu-lants, etc.), medication, and previous histo-ry of anxiety, the study time during the last night and on the days shortly before the ex-am, and the importance of testing for stu-dents, among others.

The small sample of participants in the study and the lack of balance between the number of men and women imply that our results should be interpreted with caution. Despite the clarity of these results, and giv-en the methodological characteristics of this study, we recommend future research to attempt to determine whether sleep re-duction is just an epiphenomenon of trait test anxiety or whether it explains addition-al variance in state test anxiety.

To sum up, the results of the present study lead us to conclude that examination situations contain many ingredients associ-ated with an important degree of emotional alteration. Therefore, initiatives and inter-vention programmes designed to address this question (Diego, Field, Hernández-Reif & Shaw, 2002; Serrano et al., 2002; Serrano, Sánchez-Mateos & Escolar, 2010), including promoting the benefits of sleep hygiene, could produce greater effi-ciency in responding to such situations.

Artículo recibido: 18-10-2012 aceptado: 07-03-2013


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