Exam / test anxiety
Do you freeze when exams come?
Does your heart beat faster?
Your mind goes blank?
All that time studying and your mind cant remember any?
Do you sweat buckets when you are walking into the exam hall?
Do you feel Anxious beyond your control?
Wish you had more time?
Knowing that this test will make a big impact on your life?
Test anxiety is a combination
of perceived physiological over-arousal, feelings of worry and dread,
self-depreciating thoughts, tension, and somatic symptoms that occur during test
situations. It is a physiological condition in which people experience extreme
stress, anxiety, and discomfort during and/or before taking a test. These
responses can drastically hinder an individual's ability to perform well and
negatively affects their social emotional and behavioural development and
feelings about themselves and school. Test anxiety is prevalent amongst the
student populations of the world, and has been studied formally since the early
1950s beginning with researchers George Mandler and Seymour
Sarason. Sarason's brother, Irwin G.
Sarason, then contributed to early investigation of test anxiety, clarifying the
relationship between the focused effects of test anxiety, other focused forms of
anxiety, and generalized anxiety.
Test anxiety can also be labeled
as anticipatory anxiety, situational anxiety or evaluation anxiety. Some anxiety
is normal and often helpful to stay mentally and physically alert. When one
experiences too much anxiety, however, it can result in emotional or physical
distress, difficulty concentrating, and emotional worry. Test anxiety has been
shown to have a consistently negative relationship with test performance, and
test-anxious students are found to perform about 12 percent below their
non-anxious peers. Inferior performance arises not because of intellectual
problems or poor academic preparation, but because testing situations create a
sense of threat for those experiencing test anxiety; anxiety resulting from the
sense of threat then disrupts attention and memory function.
Researchers suggest that between
25 to 40 percent of students experience test anxiety. Students with disabilities
and students in gifted educations classes tend to experience high rates of text
anxiety. Students who experience test anxiety tend to be easily distracted
during a test, experience difficulty with comprehending relatively simple
instructions, and have trouble organizing or recalling relevant
information
Theory of Test Anxiety
Anxiety is defined as the
“psychological mechanism whereby the current intensification of a dangerous
drive results in the elicitation of defences.” George Mandler and Seymour
Sarason (1952), developed the theory that anxiety present in testing situations
is an important determinate of test performance. Individuals that become highly
anxious during tests typically perform more poorly on tests than low-test
anxious persons, especially when tests are given under stressful evaluative
conditions such as a post-secondary exam. The feelings of forgetfulness, or
drawing a “blank” are developed because of anxiety-produced interference between
relevant responses and irrelevant responses generated from the person’s anxious
state. The difference in performance of a high-anxious test taker compared to a
low-anxious test taker is largely due to the difference in their ability to
focus on the tasks required. A low-anxious test taker is able to focus greater
attention on the tasks required of them while taking the test, while a
high-anxious test taker is focused on their internal self, and the anxiety they
are feeling. Anxious test takers do not perform adequately on the test as their
attention is divided between themselves and the test. Therefore, students with
high test anxiety are unable to focus their full attention on the test.
Furthermore, anxiousness is evoked when a student believes that the evaluative
situation, such as an assessment, exceeds his or her intellectual, motivational,
and social capabilities. Researchers Putwain, Woods & Symes (2010), found
that a low academic self-concept was associated with higher worry and tension
about their abilities to do well on a test. A student's metacognitive beliefs
play an important role in the maintenance of negative
self-beliefs.
Anxiety reactions can be
generalized from previous experiences to testing situations. Feelings of
inadequacy, helplessness, anticipations of punishment or loss of status and
esteem manifest anxiety responses. As well, the presence of an audience can
debilitate the performance of high anxious test takers and increase the
performance of low anxious test takers. Interestingly, persons who score high on
anxiety scales tend to describe themselves in negative, self-devaluing terms.
Highly anxious test takers also blame themselves for their failure significantly
more than low anxious test takers.
Working
Memory and Test Anxiety
WorkingMemory is essential
for understanding the phenomenon of test anxiety. Working memory is a limited
capacity system, so the addition of stress and anxiety reduces the resources
available to focus on relevant information. By identifying cognitive
interventions, it is possible to reverse the effects of test
anxiety.
The goal of most testing
situations is to measure a person’s level of knowledge or skill in a particular
area. If the testing situation itself becomes a factor in that person’s ability
to reach optimal achievement, then there can be negative consequences,
especially if certain groups are disproportionally affected.
Test anxiety refers to
impaired performance created by feelings of stress and discomfort in evaluative
situations.
Psychologists Liebert and Morris
originally attributed test anxiety to two main components: worry and
emotionality. Worry refers to cognitive factors, such as negative expectations
or feelings of inadequacy, and emotionality refers to the physical symptoms,
such as increased heart rate, muscle tension, or butterflies. Both are aversive
elements that can create anxiety, but it is the cognitive factors that have the
strongest connection to performance.
Working
Memory and Emotion
As discussed previously, people
who suffer from test anxiety are more likely to experience negative cognitions
while in evaluative situations. These thoughts and emotions create distracting
task-irrelevant activity, which uses working memory resources. This is
especially important because test anxious persons have been shown to bias their
attention towards threatening and anxiety related stimuli more than nonemotional
stimuli.
According to the attentional
capture hypothesis, emotional stimuli create specific attention demands. They
will often dominate a person’s thoughts, and any attempt to suppress them will
require additional working memory resources. When working memory divides
resources between the aversive cognitions and the task-relevant material, then
the person’s ability to use the relevant information on a test will
suffer.
Attentional
Control Theory of Working Memory
A recent theory involving anxiety
and working memory is the Attentional Control Theory. Research by Derakshan and
Eysenck found that anxiety largely impairs the processing efficiency aspect of
working memory rather than the performance effectiveness component. Processing
efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to attain effective
performance. Therefore, this theory suggests that students high in test anxiety
will have to allocate more resources to the task at hand than non-test anxiety
students in order to achieve the same results.
Attentional Control Theory also
assumes that anxiety primarily affects functioning of the central executive
component of working memory rather than the phonological loop or visuospatial
sketchpad. Specifically anxiety affects the attentional control aspect of the
central executive and its inhibition and attentional shifting functions.
Attentional control is the balance between the two attentional systems, the
goal-directed system and the stimulus-driven system. Research
suggests that anxiety disrupts the balance between the two systems, therefore
causing a reduction in the processing efficiency of the central
executive.
Pressure
and Performance Theories
There are are two important
theories that attempt to explain compromised performance. The first theory is
called Distraction Theory. This theory states that high-pressure
environments create a dual-task situation, in which the person’s attention is
divided between the task at hand and unhelpful thoughts about the situation and
possible negative consequences of poor performance. The irrelevant thoughts
compete for working memory resources, which reduces the efficiency of their
memory retrieval often leading to “choking under pressure.”
According to a different theory,
when a person is expected to perform a specific skill, the pressure may cause an
increased self-consciousness and inward focus, which can disrupt their ability
to successfully perform that task. This is called Explicit Monitoring
Theory, which says that thinking about step-by-step procedures can inhibit
one’s ability to execute a task. For example, a study by R. Gray found that
baseball players put into the high-pressure condition had increased errors, and
an increased ability to recall details like the direction their bat was moving.
This indicates that the pressured players were monitoring themselves more, which
impacted their ability to successfully hit the ball.
Individual
Differences in Working Memory
Working
Memory Capacity
When people are in high-stakes
situations, it impacts individual performance in some unexpected ways. In
general, people with higher working memory capacity do better on academic tasks,
but this changes when people are under pressure. A study by Beilock et. al
tested participants using a modular arithmetic test to conclude that adding
pressure will actually decrease the performance of those with high-working
memory, but will not lower the performance of those with low-working memory. In
other words, those with higher working-memory capacity are more vulnerable in
anxiety-producing situations. Beilock states that people with high WM are more
likely to use cognitively demanding procedures to solve the problems. These
difficult procedures require greater working memory resources, which have
difficulty competing with the increase in task-irrelevant interferences. These
findings clearly demonstrate the relationship between stressful situations and
individual working memory capacity.
There is some contradictory
evidence to support the theory that individuals with a high working memory
capacity are somewhat buffered against the effects of performance anxiety. A
study by Johnson and Gronlund found that individuals' performances on a task
showed a significant decrease in accuracy when the participant had low or
average working memory capacity, but did not significantly decrease when the
participant had a high level of working memory. Further research found that
participants with both lower working memory capacity and high test anxiety were
more prone to error.
Category
Learning
It is not possible to understand
the relationship between working memory and test anxiety without exploring the
types of learning situations that require working memory resources. Decaro et. al tested the effects of different task
categories on the performance of both high and low working memory individuals.
In this study, the categories were either rule-based, which relies heavily on
working memory, and information-integration, which incorporates more
procedural methods. The data show that those with high levels of working memory
excelled at rule-based tasks, and those with low working memory excelled at
information-integration tasks. When attempting to do procedural tasks, the
individuals with high WM were less successful then those with low WM. This
indicates that the type of task is an important factor when examining working
memory and performance.
Pressure
Situation
Many have asked the question:
which is more accurate, the Distraction Theory, or the Explicit Monitoring
Theory? The full answer is still in need of future exploration,
but preliminary research demonstrates the importance of how the
individual perceives their evaluative situation. The two types of pressure
situation include: monitoring pressure, in which an individual’s
performance is negatively impacted due to the presence of an audience, and
outcome pressure, in which an individual’s performance suffers because he
or she is thinking about the implications of the testing results. Decaro et. al
incorporated the earlier findings on category learning to test this phenomenon.
They found that rule-based performance was hurt by outcome pressure, but not
monitoring pressure, while information-integration performance was hurt by
monitoring pressure, but not outcome pressure. In other words, outcomes pressure
influences performance on tasks that are reliant on working memory, while
monitoring pressure negatively impacts tasks that are more procedural. These
findings indicate that performance is compromised in different ways depending on
the type of task, and the types of pressure. Knowing this, it is important to
pinpoint the exact type of test-anxiety that an individual is experiencing, in
order to find the best solution for enhancing their
performance.
Interventions
Using Working Memory Related Techniques
One cognitive intervention that
has been shown to be effective at reducing anxiety is attentional cognitive bias
modification. The main method used to study the intervention is a
dot-probe paradigm. In this method, participants view negative and neutral
stimuli on a screen and respond only to the neutral stimulus. This method
attempts to overcome the attentional bias shown by high anxiety participants,
who tend to focus on the more potent negative stimuli rather than the neutral
stimuli. When participants are trained to focus on the neutral stimuli while
ignoring the negative stimuli, working memory capacity is less strained and is
available to place more focus on the task at hand.
Cognitive interventions in
general do have many limitations. Some cognitive strategies have even been shown
to be detrimental to performance, particularly strategies such as thought
suppression. Only a small, recent body of research addresses cognitive
interventions, and more research needs to be done to support these new
techniques.
Signs and symptoms
Researchers believe that feelings
of anxiety arise to prepare a person for threats. In humans, anxiety symptoms
are distributed along a continuum and different symptom levels of anxiety
predict outcomes. Responses consist of increased heart rate, stress hormone
secretion, restlessness, vigilance, and fear of a potentially dangerous
environment. Anxiety prepares the body physically, cognitively, and
behaviourally to detect and deal with threats to survival. As a result, a
person’s body begins to hyperventilate to allow more oxygen to enter the
bloodstream, divert blood to muscles, and sweat to cool the skin. In
individuals, the degree to which an anxiety response is developed is based on
the probability of bad things happening in the environment and the individual’s
ability to cope with them. In the case of test taking, this might be a failing
exam grade that prevents the student from being accepted to a post-secondary
institution. A person's beliefs about their own competencies are a form of
self-knowledge, which plays an important role in analyzing situations that might
be threatening. When a person has feelings of low competence about their
abilities they are likely to anticipate negative outcomes such as failure, under
uncertain conditions. Thus, evaluative situations including tests and exams, are
perceived as more threatening by students who have low
competencies.
There is a difference between
generalized anxiety disorders (GAD) and test anxiety. GAD is characterized by
"trait anxiety" which results in a person experiencing high levels of stress
across a wide range of situations. In contrast, people with test anxiety have a
"state anxiety" which results in high levels of nervousness specific to
testing.
Symptoms of test anxiety can
range from moderate to severe. "Students who exhibit moderate symptoms are still
able to perform relatively well on exams. Other students with severe anxiety
will often experience panic attacks."
Common physical symptoms include:
headache, upset stomach, feeling of fear, feeling of dread, shortness of breath,
sweating, pacing or fidgeting, crying, racing thoughts and blanking
out
During states of excitement or
stress, the body releases adrenaline. Adrenaline is known to cause physical
symptoms that accompany test anxiety, such as increased heart rate, sweating,
and rapid breathing. In many cases having adrenaline is a good thing. It is
helpful when dealing with stressful situations, ensuring alertness and
preparation. But for some people the symptoms are difficult or impossible to
handle, making it impossible to focus on tests.
Test Anxiety consists
of:
Physiological Overarousal
— often termed emotionality. Somatic signs include headaches, stomach aches,
nausea, diarrhea, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, light-headedness or
fainting, rapid heartbeat and dry mouth. Test anxiety can also lead to panic
attacks, in which the student may have a sudden intense fear, difficulty
breathing, and extreme discomfort.
Worry & Dread —
maladaptive cognitions. This includes catastrophic expectations of gloom and
doom, fear of failure, random thoughts, feelings of inadequacy,
self-condemnation, negative self-talk, frustration and comparing oneself
unfavorably to others.
Cognitive/Behavioral —
poor concentration, "going blank" or "freezing," confusion, and poor
organization. The inability to concentrate leads to impaired performance on
tests. Fidgeting during or outright avoidance of the test. Students often report
"blanking out" even though they have studied sufficiently for the
test.
Emotional — low
self-esteem, depression, anger, and a feeling of hopelessness.
Causes
There are a variety of variables
that cause test anxiety to occur. These variables typically vary from student to
student and may include factors such as:
Anxiety, attention, or obsessive
compulsive disorders;
Perfectionist tendencies and
unrealistic expectations;
Negative self-esteem,
self-statements, and criticism;
Poor motivation, lack of
confidence, and procrastination;
Stereotype
threat;
Inadequate study and test-taking
skills;
Poor prior testing
performance;
Pressure from peers, family, and
teachers;
Unfavourable testing
environments;
Invalid, flawed, and timed tests;
and
Ineffective teaching
Poor eating, sleeping and
exercising habits.
Parents are often perceived by
students as being a source of pressure, especially when they place a strong
emphasis on obtaining high achievement scores on examinations and assessments
instead of on the effort made. Research shows that parental pressure is
associated with greater worry, test irrelevant thoughts, and stronger bodily
symptoms relating to anxiety during a test.
Other causes of test anxiety may
include fear of failure, procrastination, and previous poor test performance. As
well, characteristics of the test environment such as: nature of the task,
difficulty, atmosphere, time constraints, examiner characteristics, mode of
administration and physical setting can affect the level of anxiousness felt by
the student. Researchers Putwain & Best (2011), examined test performance
among elementary children when the teacher put pressure on the students in an
attempt to create a more high stress environment. Their findings showed that
students performed worse in high threat situations and experienced more test
anxiety and worrisome thoughts than when in a low threat
environment.
Test anxiety is known to develop
into a vicious cycle. After experiencing test anxiety on one test, the student
may become so fearful of it happening again they become more anxious and upset
than they would normally, or even than they experienced on the previous test. If
the cycle continues without acknowledgement, or the student seeking help, the
student may begin to feel helpless in the situation.
People who experience test
anxiety often have parents or siblings who have test anxiety or other types of
anxiety. Anxiety does seem to have some genetic components.
Does your heart beat faster?
Your mind goes blank?
All that time studying and your mind cant remember any?
Do you sweat buckets when you are walking into the exam hall?
Do you feel Anxious beyond your control?
Wish you had more time?
Knowing that this test will make a big impact on your life?
Test anxiety is a combination
of perceived physiological over-arousal, feelings of worry and dread,
self-depreciating thoughts, tension, and somatic symptoms that occur during test
situations. It is a physiological condition in which people experience extreme
stress, anxiety, and discomfort during and/or before taking a test. These
responses can drastically hinder an individual's ability to perform well and
negatively affects their social emotional and behavioural development and
feelings about themselves and school. Test anxiety is prevalent amongst the
student populations of the world, and has been studied formally since the early
1950s beginning with researchers George Mandler and Seymour
Sarason. Sarason's brother, Irwin G.
Sarason, then contributed to early investigation of test anxiety, clarifying the
relationship between the focused effects of test anxiety, other focused forms of
anxiety, and generalized anxiety.
Test anxiety can also be labeled
as anticipatory anxiety, situational anxiety or evaluation anxiety. Some anxiety
is normal and often helpful to stay mentally and physically alert. When one
experiences too much anxiety, however, it can result in emotional or physical
distress, difficulty concentrating, and emotional worry. Test anxiety has been
shown to have a consistently negative relationship with test performance, and
test-anxious students are found to perform about 12 percent below their
non-anxious peers. Inferior performance arises not because of intellectual
problems or poor academic preparation, but because testing situations create a
sense of threat for those experiencing test anxiety; anxiety resulting from the
sense of threat then disrupts attention and memory function.
Researchers suggest that between
25 to 40 percent of students experience test anxiety. Students with disabilities
and students in gifted educations classes tend to experience high rates of text
anxiety. Students who experience test anxiety tend to be easily distracted
during a test, experience difficulty with comprehending relatively simple
instructions, and have trouble organizing or recalling relevant
information
Theory of Test Anxiety
Anxiety is defined as the
“psychological mechanism whereby the current intensification of a dangerous
drive results in the elicitation of defences.” George Mandler and Seymour
Sarason (1952), developed the theory that anxiety present in testing situations
is an important determinate of test performance. Individuals that become highly
anxious during tests typically perform more poorly on tests than low-test
anxious persons, especially when tests are given under stressful evaluative
conditions such as a post-secondary exam. The feelings of forgetfulness, or
drawing a “blank” are developed because of anxiety-produced interference between
relevant responses and irrelevant responses generated from the person’s anxious
state. The difference in performance of a high-anxious test taker compared to a
low-anxious test taker is largely due to the difference in their ability to
focus on the tasks required. A low-anxious test taker is able to focus greater
attention on the tasks required of them while taking the test, while a
high-anxious test taker is focused on their internal self, and the anxiety they
are feeling. Anxious test takers do not perform adequately on the test as their
attention is divided between themselves and the test. Therefore, students with
high test anxiety are unable to focus their full attention on the test.
Furthermore, anxiousness is evoked when a student believes that the evaluative
situation, such as an assessment, exceeds his or her intellectual, motivational,
and social capabilities. Researchers Putwain, Woods & Symes (2010), found
that a low academic self-concept was associated with higher worry and tension
about their abilities to do well on a test. A student's metacognitive beliefs
play an important role in the maintenance of negative
self-beliefs.
Anxiety reactions can be
generalized from previous experiences to testing situations. Feelings of
inadequacy, helplessness, anticipations of punishment or loss of status and
esteem manifest anxiety responses. As well, the presence of an audience can
debilitate the performance of high anxious test takers and increase the
performance of low anxious test takers. Interestingly, persons who score high on
anxiety scales tend to describe themselves in negative, self-devaluing terms.
Highly anxious test takers also blame themselves for their failure significantly
more than low anxious test takers.
Working
Memory and Test Anxiety
WorkingMemory is essential
for understanding the phenomenon of test anxiety. Working memory is a limited
capacity system, so the addition of stress and anxiety reduces the resources
available to focus on relevant information. By identifying cognitive
interventions, it is possible to reverse the effects of test
anxiety.
The goal of most testing
situations is to measure a person’s level of knowledge or skill in a particular
area. If the testing situation itself becomes a factor in that person’s ability
to reach optimal achievement, then there can be negative consequences,
especially if certain groups are disproportionally affected.
Test anxiety refers to
impaired performance created by feelings of stress and discomfort in evaluative
situations.
Psychologists Liebert and Morris
originally attributed test anxiety to two main components: worry and
emotionality. Worry refers to cognitive factors, such as negative expectations
or feelings of inadequacy, and emotionality refers to the physical symptoms,
such as increased heart rate, muscle tension, or butterflies. Both are aversive
elements that can create anxiety, but it is the cognitive factors that have the
strongest connection to performance.
Working
Memory and Emotion
As discussed previously, people
who suffer from test anxiety are more likely to experience negative cognitions
while in evaluative situations. These thoughts and emotions create distracting
task-irrelevant activity, which uses working memory resources. This is
especially important because test anxious persons have been shown to bias their
attention towards threatening and anxiety related stimuli more than nonemotional
stimuli.
According to the attentional
capture hypothesis, emotional stimuli create specific attention demands. They
will often dominate a person’s thoughts, and any attempt to suppress them will
require additional working memory resources. When working memory divides
resources between the aversive cognitions and the task-relevant material, then
the person’s ability to use the relevant information on a test will
suffer.
Attentional
Control Theory of Working Memory
A recent theory involving anxiety
and working memory is the Attentional Control Theory. Research by Derakshan and
Eysenck found that anxiety largely impairs the processing efficiency aspect of
working memory rather than the performance effectiveness component. Processing
efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to attain effective
performance. Therefore, this theory suggests that students high in test anxiety
will have to allocate more resources to the task at hand than non-test anxiety
students in order to achieve the same results.
Attentional Control Theory also
assumes that anxiety primarily affects functioning of the central executive
component of working memory rather than the phonological loop or visuospatial
sketchpad. Specifically anxiety affects the attentional control aspect of the
central executive and its inhibition and attentional shifting functions.
Attentional control is the balance between the two attentional systems, the
goal-directed system and the stimulus-driven system. Research
suggests that anxiety disrupts the balance between the two systems, therefore
causing a reduction in the processing efficiency of the central
executive.
Pressure
and Performance Theories
There are are two important
theories that attempt to explain compromised performance. The first theory is
called Distraction Theory. This theory states that high-pressure
environments create a dual-task situation, in which the person’s attention is
divided between the task at hand and unhelpful thoughts about the situation and
possible negative consequences of poor performance. The irrelevant thoughts
compete for working memory resources, which reduces the efficiency of their
memory retrieval often leading to “choking under pressure.”
According to a different theory,
when a person is expected to perform a specific skill, the pressure may cause an
increased self-consciousness and inward focus, which can disrupt their ability
to successfully perform that task. This is called Explicit Monitoring
Theory, which says that thinking about step-by-step procedures can inhibit
one’s ability to execute a task. For example, a study by R. Gray found that
baseball players put into the high-pressure condition had increased errors, and
an increased ability to recall details like the direction their bat was moving.
This indicates that the pressured players were monitoring themselves more, which
impacted their ability to successfully hit the ball.
Individual
Differences in Working Memory
Working
Memory Capacity
When people are in high-stakes
situations, it impacts individual performance in some unexpected ways. In
general, people with higher working memory capacity do better on academic tasks,
but this changes when people are under pressure. A study by Beilock et. al
tested participants using a modular arithmetic test to conclude that adding
pressure will actually decrease the performance of those with high-working
memory, but will not lower the performance of those with low-working memory. In
other words, those with higher working-memory capacity are more vulnerable in
anxiety-producing situations. Beilock states that people with high WM are more
likely to use cognitively demanding procedures to solve the problems. These
difficult procedures require greater working memory resources, which have
difficulty competing with the increase in task-irrelevant interferences. These
findings clearly demonstrate the relationship between stressful situations and
individual working memory capacity.
There is some contradictory
evidence to support the theory that individuals with a high working memory
capacity are somewhat buffered against the effects of performance anxiety. A
study by Johnson and Gronlund found that individuals' performances on a task
showed a significant decrease in accuracy when the participant had low or
average working memory capacity, but did not significantly decrease when the
participant had a high level of working memory. Further research found that
participants with both lower working memory capacity and high test anxiety were
more prone to error.
Category
Learning
It is not possible to understand
the relationship between working memory and test anxiety without exploring the
types of learning situations that require working memory resources. Decaro et. al tested the effects of different task
categories on the performance of both high and low working memory individuals.
In this study, the categories were either rule-based, which relies heavily on
working memory, and information-integration, which incorporates more
procedural methods. The data show that those with high levels of working memory
excelled at rule-based tasks, and those with low working memory excelled at
information-integration tasks. When attempting to do procedural tasks, the
individuals with high WM were less successful then those with low WM. This
indicates that the type of task is an important factor when examining working
memory and performance.
Pressure
Situation
Many have asked the question:
which is more accurate, the Distraction Theory, or the Explicit Monitoring
Theory? The full answer is still in need of future exploration,
but preliminary research demonstrates the importance of how the
individual perceives their evaluative situation. The two types of pressure
situation include: monitoring pressure, in which an individual’s
performance is negatively impacted due to the presence of an audience, and
outcome pressure, in which an individual’s performance suffers because he
or she is thinking about the implications of the testing results. Decaro et. al
incorporated the earlier findings on category learning to test this phenomenon.
They found that rule-based performance was hurt by outcome pressure, but not
monitoring pressure, while information-integration performance was hurt by
monitoring pressure, but not outcome pressure. In other words, outcomes pressure
influences performance on tasks that are reliant on working memory, while
monitoring pressure negatively impacts tasks that are more procedural. These
findings indicate that performance is compromised in different ways depending on
the type of task, and the types of pressure. Knowing this, it is important to
pinpoint the exact type of test-anxiety that an individual is experiencing, in
order to find the best solution for enhancing their
performance.
Interventions
Using Working Memory Related Techniques
One cognitive intervention that
has been shown to be effective at reducing anxiety is attentional cognitive bias
modification. The main method used to study the intervention is a
dot-probe paradigm. In this method, participants view negative and neutral
stimuli on a screen and respond only to the neutral stimulus. This method
attempts to overcome the attentional bias shown by high anxiety participants,
who tend to focus on the more potent negative stimuli rather than the neutral
stimuli. When participants are trained to focus on the neutral stimuli while
ignoring the negative stimuli, working memory capacity is less strained and is
available to place more focus on the task at hand.
Cognitive interventions in
general do have many limitations. Some cognitive strategies have even been shown
to be detrimental to performance, particularly strategies such as thought
suppression. Only a small, recent body of research addresses cognitive
interventions, and more research needs to be done to support these new
techniques.
Signs and symptoms
Researchers believe that feelings
of anxiety arise to prepare a person for threats. In humans, anxiety symptoms
are distributed along a continuum and different symptom levels of anxiety
predict outcomes. Responses consist of increased heart rate, stress hormone
secretion, restlessness, vigilance, and fear of a potentially dangerous
environment. Anxiety prepares the body physically, cognitively, and
behaviourally to detect and deal with threats to survival. As a result, a
person’s body begins to hyperventilate to allow more oxygen to enter the
bloodstream, divert blood to muscles, and sweat to cool the skin. In
individuals, the degree to which an anxiety response is developed is based on
the probability of bad things happening in the environment and the individual’s
ability to cope with them. In the case of test taking, this might be a failing
exam grade that prevents the student from being accepted to a post-secondary
institution. A person's beliefs about their own competencies are a form of
self-knowledge, which plays an important role in analyzing situations that might
be threatening. When a person has feelings of low competence about their
abilities they are likely to anticipate negative outcomes such as failure, under
uncertain conditions. Thus, evaluative situations including tests and exams, are
perceived as more threatening by students who have low
competencies.
There is a difference between
generalized anxiety disorders (GAD) and test anxiety. GAD is characterized by
"trait anxiety" which results in a person experiencing high levels of stress
across a wide range of situations. In contrast, people with test anxiety have a
"state anxiety" which results in high levels of nervousness specific to
testing.
Symptoms of test anxiety can
range from moderate to severe. "Students who exhibit moderate symptoms are still
able to perform relatively well on exams. Other students with severe anxiety
will often experience panic attacks."
Common physical symptoms include:
headache, upset stomach, feeling of fear, feeling of dread, shortness of breath,
sweating, pacing or fidgeting, crying, racing thoughts and blanking
out
During states of excitement or
stress, the body releases adrenaline. Adrenaline is known to cause physical
symptoms that accompany test anxiety, such as increased heart rate, sweating,
and rapid breathing. In many cases having adrenaline is a good thing. It is
helpful when dealing with stressful situations, ensuring alertness and
preparation. But for some people the symptoms are difficult or impossible to
handle, making it impossible to focus on tests.
Test Anxiety consists
of:
Physiological Overarousal
— often termed emotionality. Somatic signs include headaches, stomach aches,
nausea, diarrhea, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, light-headedness or
fainting, rapid heartbeat and dry mouth. Test anxiety can also lead to panic
attacks, in which the student may have a sudden intense fear, difficulty
breathing, and extreme discomfort.
Worry & Dread —
maladaptive cognitions. This includes catastrophic expectations of gloom and
doom, fear of failure, random thoughts, feelings of inadequacy,
self-condemnation, negative self-talk, frustration and comparing oneself
unfavorably to others.
Cognitive/Behavioral —
poor concentration, "going blank" or "freezing," confusion, and poor
organization. The inability to concentrate leads to impaired performance on
tests. Fidgeting during or outright avoidance of the test. Students often report
"blanking out" even though they have studied sufficiently for the
test.
Emotional — low
self-esteem, depression, anger, and a feeling of hopelessness.
Causes
There are a variety of variables
that cause test anxiety to occur. These variables typically vary from student to
student and may include factors such as:
Anxiety, attention, or obsessive
compulsive disorders;
Perfectionist tendencies and
unrealistic expectations;
Negative self-esteem,
self-statements, and criticism;
Poor motivation, lack of
confidence, and procrastination;
Stereotype
threat;
Inadequate study and test-taking
skills;
Poor prior testing
performance;
Pressure from peers, family, and
teachers;
Unfavourable testing
environments;
Invalid, flawed, and timed tests;
and
Ineffective teaching
Poor eating, sleeping and
exercising habits.
Parents are often perceived by
students as being a source of pressure, especially when they place a strong
emphasis on obtaining high achievement scores on examinations and assessments
instead of on the effort made. Research shows that parental pressure is
associated with greater worry, test irrelevant thoughts, and stronger bodily
symptoms relating to anxiety during a test.
Other causes of test anxiety may
include fear of failure, procrastination, and previous poor test performance. As
well, characteristics of the test environment such as: nature of the task,
difficulty, atmosphere, time constraints, examiner characteristics, mode of
administration and physical setting can affect the level of anxiousness felt by
the student. Researchers Putwain & Best (2011), examined test performance
among elementary children when the teacher put pressure on the students in an
attempt to create a more high stress environment. Their findings showed that
students performed worse in high threat situations and experienced more test
anxiety and worrisome thoughts than when in a low threat
environment.
Test anxiety is known to develop
into a vicious cycle. After experiencing test anxiety on one test, the student
may become so fearful of it happening again they become more anxious and upset
than they would normally, or even than they experienced on the previous test. If
the cycle continues without acknowledgement, or the student seeking help, the
student may begin to feel helpless in the situation.
People who experience test
anxiety often have parents or siblings who have test anxiety or other types of
anxiety. Anxiety does seem to have some genetic components.
