Shyness and Children's Vocabulary Scores, 2000

The study examined the influence of conditions of test administration upon shy children's performance on tests of vocabulary. Prior research had established that shy children differ from their peers not only in their use of language in routine social encounters, but also in formal assessments of their language development, including psychometric tests of vocabulary. This has been interpreted in terms of deficits in shy children's communicative competence. An alternative hypothesis is that shy children are more anxious when tested. The two hypotheses were tested within a sample of 9-10 year-olds by examining children's performance when they undertook tests either individually with an examiner or among their peers within the familiar classroom setting. Care was taken to remedy some shortcomings in the design of previous studies, for example in the identification of shy children. Shy children performed significantly more poorly in the individual condition relative to the group condition, providing support for the social anxiety hypothesis. A younger cohort of children (aged 4-5 years) completed the vocabulary and mental arithmetic tests, but differences between shy and less shy were not significant. Nevertheless there was a trend for shy children to perform less well than their peers in all conditions. These findings are of theoretical interest but also have practical implications for testing children, especially as the assessment of young children is increasingly common in schools.