What is the rationale for the SSAA?

Trait anxiety is a relatively stable feature of an individual’s personality profile and reflects a predisposition to psychopathological conditions and heightened states of arousal whereas state anxiety or experimentally-induced anxiety is a more temporal experience often occurring in the absence of underlying psychopathological conditions. State specific anxiety is therefore dependent on isolated environmental triggers meaning that researchers are able to exert a degree of control over the onset of autonomic nervous system arousal through situational manipulation. State specific anxiety episodes are dynamic and momentary fluctuations in arousal can be expected even within the broader context of exposure to a specific stimulus. Given that state specific anxiety corresponds to a specific environmental stimulus, it is incumbent upon researchers to establish clear data collection/analysis parameters to avoid the misattribution of arousal to uncontrolled stimuli. Within the domain of foreign language education research, fixed data collection/analysis parameters able to document real-time moment-to-moment fluctuations have not been documented due to methodological limitations. In response to technological developments in wearable research devices, new opportunities have arisen to expand the research methodologies used in the recording, assessment and analysis of foreign language education anxiety.