<p>Emotions that arise while reading can relate to students’ learning processes, yet little is known about how specific textual cues correspond with test anxiety and with fluctuations in cognitive performance over time. Contemporary learning models describe how emotions such as test anxiety interact with cognitive processing in dynamic ways, suggesting that contextual cues encountered during reading may align with these processes. Building on this work, the present study aimed to examine whether exposure to a subject-related textual cue (statistics vs. English) in both a fiction text excerpt and corresponding cognitive tasks relates to university students’ verbal social perspective-taking performance and test anxiety, and whether reciprocal associations between these constructs emerge over time. Undergraduate students (<i>N</i> = 63, 52.0% female, <i>M</i>_age = 22.14) participated in a longitudinal online study, read a cue-based text excerpt, completed verbal social perspective-taking tasks containing the same cue, and responded to a manipulation check and test anxiety items. We analyzed the repeated-measures data using hierarchical Bayesian continuous-time dynamic modeling to estimate temporal processes within individuals. Results indicated a negative association between perspective-taking performance, including the cue statistics, and subsequent test anxiety, whereas the association from test anxiety to later performance remained uncertain. Both processes exhibited negative autoregressive parameters, consistent with fluctuations that tended to return toward equilibrium over time. The results point to the relevance of attending to subtle textual elements in learning materials, as such features may correspond with students’ emotional responses and the cognitive processes supporting reading and task performance.</p>