Jerrell Cassady and Ronald Johnson in their research paper, “Cognitive test anxiety and academic performance”, presented the conclusions of some of the foundational research on test anxiety and discussed the results of a study they conducted on the topic. The authors began their paper by examining the different components, namely the emotionality and the cognitive component of test anxiety and their effects on a student 's performance. According to Cassady and Johnson, “the cognitive component of test anxiety is the factor most consistently found to be associated with declines in performance” (p.272). They cite many research papers and studies which show that the effects of test anxiety such as failing an exam are not necessarily due to “going
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Strauss begins by offering a definition, “Test anxiety is a psychological condition that involves severe distress before, during and/or after an exam, making it impossible for them to do their best work.” As much as we love to think that we are phenomeinal multitaskers, the truth is that if we truly want to produce our best work we have to be 100% focused on the task at hand. Any form of distraction only takes a toll on the product we produce. As Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientists cited by Strauss states, ”When students are anxious, their worries use up some of their working memory, leaving fewer cognitive resources to devote to the test”. From this it follows that if students are able to remove or minimize their worries they can maximize their cognitive resources. This is what the interventions presented by Sstrauss attempted to do. The three interventions are writing expressively, in which students write about their negative thoughts before a test, affirming your values, in which students write about something that matters to them, and engaging in relaxation exercises. All three interventions seem to have positive results ranging from significantly improving students’ test scores (writing expressively) to shrinking the performance gap between white and black students by 40 percent (affirming your
Strauss begins by offering a definition, “Test anxiety is a psychological condition that involves severe distress before, during and/or after an exam, making it impossible for them to do their best work.” As much as we love to think that we are phenomeinal multitaskers, the truth is that if we truly want to produce our best work we have to be 100% focused on the task at hand. Any form of distraction only takes a toll on the product we produce. As Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientists cited by Strauss states, ”When students are anxious, their worries use up some of their working memory, leaving fewer cognitive resources to devote to the test”. From this it follows that if students are able to remove or minimize their worries they can maximize their cognitive resources. This is what the interventions presented by Sstrauss attempted to do. The three interventions are writing expressively, in which students write about their negative thoughts before a test, affirming your values, in which students write about something that matters to them, and engaging in relaxation exercises. All three interventions seem to have positive results ranging from significantly improving students’ test scores (writing expressively) to shrinking the performance gap between white and black students by 40 percent (affirming your