Test anxiety
[2] Research suggests that high levels of emotional distress have a direct correlation to reduced academic performance and higher overall student drop-out rates.
[2][3][4] Test anxiety can have broader consequences, negatively affecting a student's social, emotional and behavioural development, as well as their feelings about themselves and school.
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.
Responses consist of increased heart rate, stress hormone secretion, restlessness, vigilance, and fear of a potentially dangerous environment.
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 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.
GAD is characterized by "trait anxiety" which results in a person experiencing high levels of stress across a wide range of situations.
Adrenaline is known to cause physical symptoms that accompany test anxiety, such as increased heart rate, sweating, and rapid breathing.
[5][21] Researchers Putwain & Best (2011),[28] examined test performance among elementary children when the teacher put pressure on the students in an attempt to create a more high stress environment.
In order to be diagnosed as suffering from a social phobia, the DSM-IV states that the individual must present four different factors.
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.
[7] Emotionality means that the individual shows high levels of several different symptoms related to test anxiety that can be seen through physiological responses experienced during situations where they are being evaluated; such as an exam.
[7] Some of the physiological manifestations include: increased galvanic skin response and heart rate, dizziness, nausea, or feelings of panic.
[7] Some of the thoughts that individuals with high cognitive test anxiety are constantly dealing with are comparing self performance to peers, considering the consequences of failure, low levels of confidence in performance, excessive worry about grades, feeling that they are unprepared for tests, and loss of self-worth.
[7] 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.
[34] Feelings of inadequacy, helplessness, anticipations of punishment or loss of status and esteem manifest anxiety responses.
[36] Working memory has a limited capacity, and the addition of stress and anxiety reduces the resources available to focus on relevant information.
[38] Emotional stimuli will often dominate a person's thoughts, and any attempt to suppress them will require additional working memory resources.
[37] 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.
[36] Shortfalls in performance that are caused by test anxiety seem to be related to the extent to which the student has full access to their working memory.
[44] In support of this theory, there is strong evidence that anxiety largely impairs processing efficiency rather than performance effectiveness.
[47] Early scales, by authors such as Charles Spielberger, tended to focus on physiological and somatic features and on worry, commonly referred to as emotionality,[48] while more recent offerings, such as that by Cassady & Johnson, emphasize cognitive processes.
The routine practice of slow, Device-Guided Breathing (DGB) is a major component of behavioral treatments for anxiety conditions.
[54] To gain an accurate assessment of student comprehension, instructors should be concerned with minimizing the effects of test anxiety.
