The influence of perceived task difficulty on task performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence that the perceived difficulty of a task has on task performance. Twenty-one undergraduate college students were asked to complete three anagram worksheets. Each worksheet had a different description of difficulty (easy, medium, hard), although all worksheets were of the same difficulty. Participants self-reported amounts of anxiety, effort, perceived competence, and task difficulty after each worksheet. A repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant linear effect for perceived difficulty on task performance (F(1) = 10.42, p\u3c0.05) , and paired-samples t-tests showed that participants had significantly more successful responses on the easy (M = 4.67, SD = 1.11) and medium (M = 4.48, SD = 1.37) worksheets than on the hard worksheet (M = 3.43, SD = 1.99), and self reported ratings of perceived competence were higher for the easy difficulty (M = 4.67, SD = 1.65) than hard (M = 3.57, SD = 2.16) difficulty. These findings and directions for future research are discussed