The dreaded countdown begins. \nAn ominous clock on the wall reveals five minutes until test time. You skim your notes, trying to read as many pages as possible before all you have to rely on is your memory. \nA conversation two rows ahead distracts you -- a student is bragging about his amazing win in a drinking game from the previous night. \n"Why wasn't he studying? Isn't he worried?" you wonder as your heart pounds faster with anxiety.\nBut the real kicker comes one week later, when you notice that same party-loving student pulled off a B on the test, and you are stuck holding a paper with a large red C marked across the upper margin.\nAs students at IU begin to get back the dreaded midterms they took before spring break, many might find themselves in the same situation -- they study extremely hard yet always seem to receive poor grades on important tests. According to a new study published in the February issue of Psychological Science, worrying and stressing about the test might be the reason so many grade-conscious students have less-than-stellar performances on exams. \nD is for distractions\nIn their research, psychology professors Sian Beilock of Miami University of Ohio and Thomas Carr of Michigan State University found students with the working-memory capacity to do better in school are the ones most likely to "choke" in high-pressure situations, such as tests, and end up with comparable to those of average students. \nWhile previous studies have shown how pressure hurts individuals, this is the first to examine how individual differences in working-memory are affected by pressure.\nWorking-memory describes a person's short-term memory. An average person's short-term memory can only retain about seven items at a time for about 30 seconds. It also is used to maintain and process limited information relative to the task at hand while preventing distractions from the environment and irrelevant thoughts, according to the National Institute of Health. People with a high working-memory capacity are able to retain more short-term information at one time, compared to people with a low working-memory capacity. \nWhen a person worries while working on cognitive-based academic skills, such as math, part of their working-memory is consumed with that anxiety instead of being used to execute the task at hand. As a result, the researchers found their performance and test grades suffer.\n"To be really good at complicated cognitive activities, it requires that you have the ability to keep lots of stuff in mind at once. Instead of getting distracted and worrying about the consequences, you focus on the task," Carr said. "If you allow yourself to get off task and think about the situation rather than concentrating on the task, then you lose your advantage -- all that extra work power you might have."
Flaws of the SATs\nResults from this study have researchers wondering if high-pressure tests, such as the SATs or GREs, are really the best predictors of a student's academic potential. In essence, results from this study suggest the students most equipped to handle tests like these are also the ones who are most likely to blow them. \n"These tests are supposed to predict who's going to be most likely to succeed at the next level," Beilock said. "If you're taking such tests in high-pressure situations, however, one thing that might be doing is diminishing those differences."\nIn the study, a group of 93 undergraduates at Michigan State University completed low-pressure and high-pressure tests, both consisting of easy and difficult math problems. During the low-pressure test, high working-memory individuals performed better than low working-memory individuals -- most notably on the difficult problems. \nResearchers then added pressure to the situation by offering monetary incentives, peer pressure and social evaluations. To receive the reward, students were required to do 20 percent better. As a result of this pressure, the performance of high working-memory individuals significantly declined on the most difficult problems, while the performance of low-working memory individuals remained the same. \nAlthough in typical testing situations monetary rewards do not exist, pressure to do well from family members, peers, professors and personal goals might provide enough stress for grade-driven students to hinder their ability to perform well on exams.
EEnie, meenie, minie, moe\nAlthough the exact reason why pressure influences students with the ability to do well more so than other students is still somewhat uncertain, Beilock said it might be because low working-memory individuals use guessing strategies to solve problems instead of relying entirely on their working memory. \n"It may be that low working-memory individuals are not relying much on their limited working-memory capacity to begin with," she said. "As a result, when the pressure is on, there is not much to disrupt. In contrast, high-working memory individuals rely heavily on their capacity to show their superior performance. When the pressure is on, it gets in the way of their ability to perform at a high level."\nJunior Katie Greer said she is not a nervous test-taker. She usually gets B's or higher on tests even when she only studies a few hours. The strategy she uses when she does not know the answer involves process of elimination or, in desperate situations, the ever-popular "eenie, meenie, minie, moe" tactic.\n"A lot of times I feel like I don't know the material, but then I get in there and I do fine," she said.\nRichard Shiffrin, a distinguished professor of psychology at IU not involved in the study, said he found the results interesting. But he cautioned against forming a general conclusion about the entire population from this research. \n"Different results could occur at a school like Harvard," he said. "Most entering students at such schools have succeeded at the highest levels, but not all of these can continue to do so at college. The pressure felt and the responses to pressure might differ for students who have extremely high levels of working-memory capacity but are not experiencing the highest levels of success."\nAlthough he is not teaching many classes anymore, Shiffrin said he prefers take-home tests, which students work through until they get the answers correct as opposed to high-pressure tests.\n"I give take-home tests to try to induce learning, rather than putting students under high-pressure test situations," he said. "I don't generally think it's an ideal way to learn."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Hannah \nSchroder at hschrode@indiana.edu.
