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The following material is excerpted from Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Test Performance in America’s Schools: Results from the TestEdge National Demonstration Study. Read or download a free copy of the complete study, or view or download the executive summary.
The following material is excerpted from Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Test Performance in America’s Schools: Results from the TestEdge National Demonstration Study. Read or download a free copy of the complete study, or view or download the executive summary.
Cognitive Model of Test Anxiety
Most research on test anxiety, and, correspondingly, most interventions for addressing it, adopt a primarily cognitive model, one that gives primacy to the cognitive processes that influence the anxiety response. Building upon Lazarus’s (1966) conception of stress as a "transactional process," Spielberger (1966, 1976) developed a model of test anxiety which distinguished between the stress associated with testing situations (the stressor), the subjective evaluation of the degree of threat a given test poses to the individual (the threat), and the emotional state of anxiety evoked in the individual in response to the perceived threat—such feelings oas tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry, and the associated physiological arousal generated by activation of the autonomic nervous system.
The premise of the Spielberger model is that the intensity of the anxiety reaction "will vary as a function of the degree of perceived threat" (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995a: 6). In other words, the anxiety reaction is driven by a cognitive evaluation of the perceived potential threat posed by a test. In short, the model views test anxiety as the outcome of a specific temporal sequence of events (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995a: 6-7):
According to Spielberger’s model, the process starts when a person is faced with a challenging task, such as a test. The second step in the process is the formation of cognitive perceptions about the difficulty of the task. These perceptions are affected by the amount of preparation the individual has undertaken (knowledge and study skills) and his or her perceived test-taking skills. The next step involves the subconscious evaluation of the accuracy of these perceptions. This evaluation is ongoing and cyclical as the student constantly reforms perceptions about self in relation to the task and appraises the accuracy of these perceptions. For students with relatively higher levels of trait anxiety, the internal perceptions and appraisals result in a view of the challenge as threatening.
This, in turn, increases physical/autonomic stress responses (termed "emotionality" in some test anxiety research) and worry, which interfere with cognitive processes. These effects influence the last step in the process, the response produced in testing situations. The response can facilitate or inhibit test performance, thus affecting the test’s ability to measure the student’s true level of knowledge or skill (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995a; Cizek & Burg, 2006).
In the model of test anxiety just described, it is the cognitive perception and appraisal of a challenge (the test) as threatening that is viewed as driving the consequent activation of a set of physiological, psychological, and behavioral reactions which can be characterized as the "anxiety response." According to the cognitive perspective, all emotional aspects of the anxiety response necessarily follow a cognitive assessment of the stressor; it is therefore presumed that by changing one’s thoughts about a potentially threatening stimulus, one can gain control over one’s emotions. However, this presumption belies the enormous, omnipresent influence that emotions are now known to have on virtually all aspects of cognition and behavior, as discussed below.
Emotional Basis of Anxiety
Recent research in the neurosciences has significantly broadened our understanding of the workings of the emotional system itself, as well as its extensive interactions with cognitive function. On the basis of this new understanding, emotion and cognition can best be thought of as separate but interacting functions and systems which communicate via bidirectional neural connections between the neocortex and emotional centers such as the amygdala. These connections allow emotion-related input to modulate cortical activity and cognitive input from the cortex to modulate emotional processing.
However, research has shown that the neural connections that transmit information from the emotional centers to the cognitive centers in the brain are stronger and more numerous than those that convey information from the cognitive to the emotional centers (LeDoux, 1996). This accounts for the powerful influence of input from the emotional system on virtually all stages of cognitive processing involved in functions such as attention, perception, and memory, as well as on higher-order thought processes, like logical reasoning and rational decision making. This fundamental asymmetry also provides a physiological basis for the common experience that emotions such as anxiety can readily dominate the mental landscape, yet it is usually far more difficult to willfully "turn off" these strong feelings through thought alone.
Moreover, it is now clear that the emotional system can also operate entirely independently of the cognitive system. For example, studies have found that emotional processes operate at a much higher speed than thoughts and frequently bypass the mind’s linear reasoning process entirely (LeDoux, 1996). This has been described in more popular terms as "emotional hijacking" (Goleman, 1995). In other words, not all emotions follow thoughts; emotions often occur without involvement of the cognitive system and, moreover, can significantly color the cognitive process and its output (LeDoux, 1996; LeDoux, 1994; Niedenthal & Kitayama, 1994).
Such is the case when emotional memories of past threatening experiences automatically trigger a fear-anxiety response to a future anticipated event, often circumventing the processes of conscious thought and self-control. LeDoux’s work (1996) provides an understanding of the mechanisms involved. Evolving long before the neocortex, the subcortical brain circuitry involved in emotional processing is highly attuned to signs of potential danger, and it is hyperreactive to perceived threat. Through a process called fear conditioning, the body can learn to perceive an otherwise mundane stimulus as threatening. The amygdala forms a key part of this subcortical circuitry, and it is responsible for processing subconscious emotional memory in which it plays a significant role in the activation of fear. Even before the cortex is able to consciously perceive and respond to a threat,
the amygdala has already activated the body’s stress response, causing a flood of biochemical and cardiovascular reactions.
Within this context of test anxiety, the important point is that emotional memories can be triggered by the anticipation of a future event that is similar to a past unpleasant event, irrespective of whether or not those emotions are appropriate for the current situation (LeDoux, 1996). In each new situation, the amygdala takes in sensory input across the full range of bodily experience (sights, sounds, smells, facial expressions, perceptions of nonverbal behavior, etc.) and, through a pattern-matching process (described in a later section), looks for a match between these current sensory inputs and those stored as past emotional memories. Once the amygdala finds a match or near match, it triggers a system-wide physiological and psychological response.
Taken as a whole, these new understandings of the extensive interactions between the emotional and cognitive systems have enormous implications for education, as Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007) elaborate in a recent paper aptly titled "We Feel, Therefore We Learn." As noted at the outset of this chapter, they conclude that the very "aspects of cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely, learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning, are all profoundly affected by and subsumed within the processes of emotion" (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007.:
In short, this perspective helps explain why it is most often one’s feelings and emotions, rather than thoughts and cognitions alone, that are the most powerful drivers of physiological responses and the strongest motivators of behavior. For this reason, interventions that focus solely on mental processes may often fail to identify the fundamental source of an emotional disturbance such as anxiety, and thus to resolve it. In some cases, try as one might to rectify one’s thinking, one can fall short of achieving emotional relief simply because the underlying maladaptive emotional pattern are driven largely by unconscious processes that operate independently of the intellect.
Psychophysiology of Anxiety
Understanding the psychophysiological manifestations and effects of anxiety is crucial in comprehending its tremendous impact on student cognition, learning, and academic performance. The somatic expression of anxiety is often portrayed as a preparation to flee, in accord with Cannon’s (1929) "flight-or-fight" model of response to threat. Cannon emphasized increases in sympathetic nervous system activity to optimize blood flow and metabolism, as reflected in cardiovascular changes such as increased heart rate and blood pressure.
Hence, it is reasonable to expect that anxiety states, by way of their close relationship to fear, would be associated with autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation; this notion is indeed well supported. In addition to the changes in ANS activity, research has also found that habitual increases in stress hormones, such as cortisol, can produce an increase in brain receptor sites for these chemicals. This increases the physiological likelihood of perpetuating and amplifying these stress-induced states (Rosenzweig, Leiman, & Breedlove, 1999). Research has also shown that routine low-level "cortisol baths" significantly contribute to the development and onset of depression (National Institute of Mental Health, 2000).
When a challenge is perceived as threatening and triggers feelings of fear and anxiety, this response can manifest in a wide range of symptoms, including sleep disturbance, withdrawal, vomiting, sweating, crying, throwing tantrums or wetting themselves (in younger children), inappropriate behaviors, cheating, or sudden illness, especially the night before a test (Edelstein, 2000: 2). Longer-term effects of test anxiety include erosion of academic motivation and positive attitudes towards education and learning, and reinforcement of negative self-perceptions of confidence and ability to learn (Cizek & Burg, 2006).
One of the often underappreciated effects of anxiety is that it distracts attention. The importance of this is clear from research in neuroscience that has shown that we only perceive what we attend to—a phenomenon termed inattentional blindness (Most, Scholl, Clifford, & Simons, 2005). The implication of this is that when a student’s attention is sufficiently distracted by intense feelings of anxiety, it can severely compromise his or her ability to fully attend to, and thus correctly perceive, comprehend, and respond to the information on a test. In some cases, anxiety-induced inattentional blindness may cause a student to misread test questions and therefore answer incorrectly, as a result of not consciously "seeing" and mentally processing critical words, phrases, or other visual information contained in the questions.
Anxiety and worry also generate the equivalent of mental "noise" in the brain, overloading the neural circuits that are otherwise available for and involved in higher order cognitive processes. Research has shown that the psychophysiological activity associated with heightened anxiety and other negative emotions interferes with the brain’s ability to properly synchronize neural activity (Ratey, 2001). The resulting desynchronization inhibits brain processes necessary for functions such as attention, memory recall, abstract reasoning, problem solving, and creativity. Thus, when students come to school or enter a testing situation with high levels of anxiety and emotional stress, the resulting "inner noise" impairs the very cognitive resources needed for learning, memory, and effective academic performance (Arguelles, McCraty, & Rees, 2003; McCraty, 2005).
Emotions and Heart Rhythm Patterns
Research at the Institute of HeartMath has shown that the physiological desynchronization associated with anxiety and other negative emotions is also reflected in patterns of heart activity. This research utilized an important measure of the heart’s rhythmic activity called heart rate variability. This is described briefly in what follows.
Rather than beating at a constant rate and thus generating a steady rhythm, the beat-to-beat activity of a healthy heart under resting conditions is actually quite irregular, reflecting the nervous system’s variable adaptiveness to inputs from both inside and outside the body. This natural beat-to-beat fluctuation in heart rate, generated by the dynamic interplay of many of the body’s systems, is known as heart rate variability (HRV; see Figure 1). Short-term (beat-to beat) changes in heart rate are largely generated and amplified by the interaction between the heart and brain, mediated via the flow of neural signals through the efferent (descending) and afferent (ascending) pathways of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the ANS. Scientifically, HRV is thus regarded as a measure of neurocardiac function that reflects heart-brain interactions and autonomic nervous system dynamics.
When beat-to-beat changes in heart rate are plotted over time, the overall shape of the waveform produced is called the heart rhythm pattern (examples are shown in Figure 2).
Emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger, and frustration produce heart rhythm patterns that appear incoherent—disordered and erratic (McCraty et al., 2006; Tiller, McCraty, & Atkinson, 1996); see Figure 2. Studies have shown that prefrontal cortex activity affects patterns of heart activity via modulation of the parasympathetic branch of the ANS (Lane, Reiman, Ahern, & Thayer, 2001); therefore, disordered activity in higher-level brain systems manifests as increased disorder in heart rhythm patterns. Physiologically, incoherent heart rhythm patterns are also indicative of desynchronization in the reciprocal action of the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the ANS (McCraty et al., 1995; Tiller et al., 1996). This ANS desynchronization taxes the nervous system and bodily organs and thus impedes the efficient flow of information throughout the psychophysiological systems (McCraty et al., 2006).
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Figure 1. Segments of ECG recording showing beat-to-beat variability in resting heart rhythm.
This diagram shows three heartbeats recorded on an electrocardiogram (ECG). Note that variation in the time interval between consecutive heartbeats, yielding a different heart rate (in beats per minute) for each interbeat interval. This natural beat-to-beat variation in heart rate is known as heart rate variability (HRV).
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In contrast, sustained positive emotions, such as appreciation, care, compassion, and love, generate a smooth, ordered, sine-wave-like pattern in the heart’s rhythms. This pattern reflects increased synchronization between the two branches of the ANS and a general shift in autonomic balance towards increased parasympathetic activity. As is visually evident (Figure 2.) and also demonstrable by quantitative methods (Tiller et al, 1996; McCraty et al, 2006), heart rhythms associated with positive emotions, such as appreciation, are clearly more coherent—organized as a stable pattern of repeating sine waves—than those generated during a negative emotional experience such as anxiety.
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Figure 2. Heart rhythm patterns reflect different emotional states.
These heart rate tachograms show examples of the heart rate variability patterns recorded in real time from individuals experiencing different emotions. Negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, and frustration, typically give rise to an erratic, irregular heart rhythm pattern (incoherence). In contrast, positive emotions, such as appreciation, care, and compassion, produce a highly ordered, stable heart rhythm pattern of smooth, repeating sine waves (coherence).
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Heart Activity Affects Brain Function
An important, but lesser known consideration, is that patterns of heart rhythm activity not only reflect brain processes involved in thought and emotion, but also affect these processes via the flow of neural signals through the cardiovascular afferent (ascending) nerves to the brain.
The effect of heart activity on brain function has been researched extensively over the last half century. It is now known that the heart actually sends more neurological signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart (Cameron, 2002). Moreover, it has been shown that these heart signals have a significant effect on brain function—not only exerting homeostatic effects via their interaction with cardiovascular and respiratory regulatory centers in the brain, but also influencing the activity and function of higher brain centers involved in perceptual, cognitive, and emotional processing (see McCraty et al., 2006, for a review).
Research has also demonstrated that different patterns of cardiac activity have distinct effects on cognitive and emotional function. For example (see Figure 3.), during emotional stress such as anxiety, when patterns of heart activity are erratic and disordered, the corresponding patterns of neurological signals traveling from the heart to the brain produce an inhibition of higher cognitive functions. This limits one’s ability to think clearly, focus, remember, learn, and reason. The heart’s input to the brain during stressful or negative emotions also has a profound effect on the brain’s emotional processes—both compromising emotion regulation and reinforcing the emotional experience of stress.
In contrast, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart’s input to the brain during positive emotions has the opposite effect—serving to facilitate cognitive function and reinforcing positive feelings and emotional stability. This is a particularly important point in understanding the operative mechanism of the HeartMath techniques taught in the TestEdge program.
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Figure 3. Heart activity affects brain function.
This diagram illustrates afferent (ascending) pathways by which neurological signals generated by the heart are transmitted to key centers in the brain. These heart signals not only impact autonomic regulatory centers in the brain (e.g., the medulla), but also cascade up to higher brain centers involved in emotional and cognitive processing, including the thalamus, amygdala, and cortex. By these pathways, heart activity exerts a continuous impact on numerous aspects of brain function. As shown, when patterns of heart activity are erratic and disordered, such as during emotional stress, the corresponding patterns of neurological signals traveling from the heart to the brain produce an inhibition of higher cognitive and emotional functions.
In contrast, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart’s input to the brain during positive emotions has the opposite effect—serving to facilitate cognitive function and reinforcingpositive feelings and emotional stability.
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Relationship Between Test Anxiety and Performance
At the high school level, a recent large-scale national study (Bradley et al., 2007), funded by the U.S. Department of Education, evaluated the efficacy of HeartMath’s TestEdge program, which teaches students emotional management skills to reduce stress and test anxiety. The primary investigation, designed as a multi-methods, quasi-experimental, longitudinal field study with intervention and control schools, involved 980 tenth grade students from two California high schools. After participation in the semester-long program, there was a significant reduction in test anxiety in the intervention group, which was evident across the entire spectrum of academic ability.
This was accompanied by significant improvements in a range of socioemotional measures, including negative affect, interactional difficulty, stress management ability and positive class experience. A significant improvement in performance on two California standardized tests – the California High School Exit Exam and the California Standards Test – was also measured in several student subgroups (examples shown in Figure 4). Of particular import are the results from an electrophysiological sub-study, conducted to provide an objective measure of students’ stress management ability in a simulated stressful testing situation. These data confirmed that students had acquired the ability to self-activate the coherence state by using the HeartMath tools, and also that they were able to effectively apply this skill while preparing to take a challenging test (Figure 5).
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Figure 4. Changes in Test Anxiety and Test Performance in Matched-Group Comparisons.
ANCOVA results from the TestEdge study for two sub-samples from the intervention and control schools matched on: 1) sociodemographic factors (White Females in average academic level classes), and 2) 9th grade Math test performance (Math Group 1), respectively. For these matched-group comparisons, significant reductions in test anxiety in conjunction with significant improvements in test performance (California Standards Test – English-Language Arts) were observed in the experimental group as compared to the control group. *p < 0.05. (From Bradley et al., 2007, © Institute of HeartMath).
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Figure 5. Heart rate variability (HRV) recordings from the electrophysiological study.
Showing four students’ heart rhythm patterns while they prepared for themselves for the Stroop stress test, both before and after the TestEdge intervention. Pre- and post-intervention test anxiety level (TAI-Global Scale score) and the California Standards Test (CST)—English Language Arts test score for each student are also shown. For the two students in the intervention school, the recordings show a shift from an erratic, irregular heart rhythm pattern (left-hand side) before the intervention, to a sustained sine-wave-like pattern (increased heart rhythm coherence), indicative of the coherence state, after the intervention. By contrast, both the pre and post HRV recordings for the students in the control school signify an ongoing incoherent psychophysiological state.
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