Here is the third and final part in the series dealing with test anxiety. If you missed the first two parts, they are located here and here. Enjoy!
Journaling
Numerous
studies have shown that when students feel anxious about performing on an exam,
they worry about the situation. These
worries then compromise the students’ working memory. How can we help students alleviate these
worries, thus freeing up precious working memory? The simple act of writing about and
expressing their worries before a critical exam can do exactly that.
In one
particular study, students were subjected to two math exams. All students took the first exam under the
same conditions, which was relatively stress-free. Then, using various methods[1], the pressure was applied
to both groups to make the second exam as pressure-packed as possible. In between those exams, the control group was
asked to sit quietly for 10 minutes. The
experimentation group was asked to write as openly as possible about their
feelings and worries regarding the test.
Everyone then took the second test.
The control
group choked under the pressure. They
showed a 12% decrease in their test scores between the first and second
exams. The expressive writing group
actually demonstrated a 5% increase
in their test scores over the non-pressure filled first exam. Not only did the expressive writing
assignment help students avoid choking under pressure, it actually helped them
rise to the occasion and perform better when the pressure was on. Researchers were further able to demonstrate
that the more the students used anxiety-related words, the greater the effects.[2]
This act of
being honest with ones self, with facing your fears, provides a very valuable
benefit to students. And it only took 10
minutes of their times right before the exam!
We see how this concept plays out in other areas as well.
Take the
example of David Price, a professional baseball player for the Tampa Bay
Rays. In 2008, he arrived in the major
leagues only months after being drafted out of college. Shortly thereafter, he found himself facing
the New York Yankees in the playoffs. He
entered the game as a reliever late in game 7 of the American League
Championship Series, with everything on the line. He would go on to clinch the game for his
team and send them on to the World Series for the first time ever. Here is how he described his feelings as he
got ready to enter the game:
I took it back to the same preparation as college. I did my visualization. I’d envisioned myself failing now and
again. It’s human. When you’ve done that envisioning, you’ve
seen it before. You don’t always
envision the good stuff because you’re going to give up that home run, you’re
going to give up that go-ahead run or game winning hit. It’s part of the game.
Price has
done his own mental journaling. He
knows what the stakes are; he knows he might not get the results he would
like. He is being realistic with
himself. He has faced his fears, and is
therefore no longer intimidated by them.
His working memory has been freed of worry. Also note that he has practiced all of this
before – he used the same preparation he did in college. “All the pressure was right there, but I
wasn’t going to think about it,” Price would say. “Pressure is perceived. If I don’t put added pressure on myself, I’ll
be fine.” [3]
The same lesson should be taught
to students, you don’t have to be perfect - perform your best and face your
fears. Journaling can be the key to
establishing this mindset right before a critical exam.
Eliminate Negative Stereotypes
Students
who are aware of the fact that they are being stereotyped perform much worse on
exams than those who are not aware of such stereotypes. This is known as the stereotype threat, and
the threat is both real and damaging.
Take this
experiment as an example of the stereotype threat. A group of students who scored very well on
standardized math tests were gathered at the University of Michigan. The students were divided into two groups,
with a combination of males and females in both groups. The first group was told before their math
exam that the exam they were about to take had shown differences between the
sexes in terms of scores. In this group,
males outperformed females on the exam.
The second group was told that their exam was gender-neutral. On this exam, females performed just as well
as males.
Or take
this example of the stereotype threat. A
professor of Psychology at Tufts University, Julio Garcia, gathered a group of
athletic, white students. A white
instructor lead them through a series of exercises: jump as high as they could, do a standing
broad jump, and do as many pushups as possible in 20 seconds. Then the students were asked to do each of
these exercises again, and as expected they improved in each of the tasks. Then Garcia had a second group of students
attempt the same experiment, except this time the students had an
African-American instructor. The white
students then failed to improve on their vertical jumps, and some jumped less
high. The white students showed the same
improvements they previously had in all of the other exercises. The explanation? There is no stereotype regarding how many
pushups white athletes can do as compared to their African-American
counterparts, but there is the prevalent stereotype regarding how high white
men can jump.
What it all
comes down to is that when your working memory has been compromised by thoughts
surrounding the negative stereotype, you do not perform as well as you possibly
can.
This can be particularly
damaging to law school students. Working
memory is housed in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Tasks that are more verbal in nature, rather
than spatial, take place in the left prefrontal cortex. Virtually all tasks assigned in law school
are verbal in nature, rather than spatial.
When pressure filled exams creates worries or doubts in student’s
brains, these worries or doubts are also verbal in nature – they are internal
monologues in the student’s brain – and thus also taking place in the left
prefrontal cortex. So when a student is
aware of negative stereotypes, not only does this affect their working memory,
it affects the specific part of their working memory that is being called upon
to perform on law school exams.
The most significant
stereotypes we work against are those based on prior performance. For example, a student might be confronted
with the fact that students in previous years who graduated with subpar GPA
only passed the bar exam at a 30% rate.
Their overall law school GPA is subpar, therefore they believe the odds
are against them. This is a real,
definable stereotype, but there is more to the equation, and that is what we
try to demonstrate to students.
For example, we can show them
that if they complete all required tasks during bar exam preparation, that
their chances of passing jump to 80%, regardless of their GPA. This helps motivate the student to do the
work, but also shifts the focus for them as well.[4] This is actually one of the main reasons we
track statistics – to provide a positive framework and confidence for students
getting ready to take the bar exam.
Other techniques discussed in
this paper can also help students avoid the implications of the negative
stereotype, such as journaling and meditation.
The key is to clear working memory of these thoughts so that cognitive
performance can be maximized.
Meditation
Meditation
generally involves a practice of clearing one’s mind. For example, most people who are performing
Zen meditation are focusing on one thing at a time – typically their
breathing. They must clear their minds
of everything else. If something else
pops into their mind, they must be able to deal with it quickly and discard
it. As a result, individuals who
practice meditation have been shown to be able to control their thoughts much
better than those who do not practice meditation.
The
benefits of meditation thus become very clear considering everything that has
been discussed to this point.
Performance on pressure filled exams is dependent upon full function of
a students working memory. Anything that can creep into the student’s brain and
could compromise their working memory will act as a detriment to cognitive
performance. So it would make sense that
those people who have been trained to control their thoughts and discard
distracting thoughts would be better able to clear their working memory of
distractions on an important exam.
So , do you
have to spend years training to become a Zen master in order to reap the
benefits of meditation? Not exactly,
though it would be beneficial. One study
showed that three months of meditation practice reduced people’s tendency to
have their attention derailed by unwanted thoughts or emotions. In another study, students with no meditation
experience were instructed to perform 10 minutes of meditation and mindful
breathing prior to an exam. Those who
did so performed 5% better than those who did not. This may seem like a minor increase, but
there is not much of an investment here either.
And on the bar exam, a 5% increase in performance can often make the
difference between passing and failing.
All of
these benefits probably explain why so many successful people practice
meditation. Tiger Woods credits
meditation with helping him develop his ability to perform in the clutch. Former Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls
head coach Phil Jackson advocated meditation to increase his player’s
performance, including the great Michael Jordan. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton also tout
meditation as a tool for performance under pressure. [5]
Conclusion
Student’s
ability to perform well under pressure usually relates do their ability to
manage their working memory. More
working memory means more cognitive horsepower to devote to complex mental
tasks, such as taking an exam. By
following some of the suggestions in this paper, students should be able to
maximize their working memory capabilities, and perform at their best when it
matters the most.
Sources
Sian Beilock, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About
Getting it Right When You Have To, Free Press Publishing, 2010.
Paul Sullivan, Clutch: Excel Under Pressure, Portfolio/Penguin
Publishing, 2010.
Larry Lage (June 26, 2008). Mediate makes the most of his brush with Tiger, The Seattle Times, Associated Press. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
Gerardo Ramirez and Sian
Beilock, Writing About Testing Worries
Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom, Science Magazine, January 14,
2011 (Vol 331).
Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?, Jossey-BassPublishing, 2009.
S.J. Spencer and C.M. Steele
and D.M. Quinn, “Stereotype threat and
women’s math performance.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35
(1999).
Malcolm Gladwell, The
Art of Failure, The New Yorker, August 21 & 28, 2000.
[1]
“After completing the pretest, students were given a high-pressure scenario
based on common pressures: monetary
incentives (which stand in for scholarships associated with high test scores)
and peer pressure and social evaluation (which comes from judgments of test
scores from admissions committees, teachers, parents and peers).” Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock, Writing About Testing Worries Boosts Exam
Performance in the Classroom, Science Magazine, January 14, 2011 (Vol 331)
at 212.
[2] In
an additional experiment, there were three groups given the second exam – the
control group, the expressive writing group, and a group of students asked to
write about something completely unrelated to the test. The expressive writing group still performed
the best, but the unrelated writing group as a whole still performed better
than the control group. Researchers then
analyzed the responses from the unrelated writing group, and found it was those
who used anxiety related words, such as “I am afraid,” that performed better,
while others who id not use such langauge did not perform better than the
control group. Id.
[3] A
full recounting of this story is in the book Clutch by Paul Sullivan.
Sullivan details how Price came to be able to rise to the occasion,
while another player on the opposite team in the same game, Alex Rodriguez,
failed to do the same.
[4]
These statistics cited are in the ballpark of what we sometimes see, but in no
way are meant to reflect our actual statistics.
[5]
There are many books and articles out there on how to develop proper meditation
techniques, and it is a topic well beyond the scope of this paper. However, basic mindful breathing exercises
are a simple, easy way to get students started.
Simply ask students to find a comfortable spot and spend 10 minutes
focusing on their breathing – count to four while breathing in, count to eight
while breathing out. If anything comes
into your mind, accept it but then try to push it from you mind and return to a
focus on your breathing. This type of
exercise has also been shown to reduce blood pressure and stress levels.
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