Test Anxiety: It Affects Most People, But You Can Learn to Overcome it
Test anxiety – Despite having no listing in Webster’s Dictionary and not being acknowledged by many people, test anxiety is so common that the vast majority of people in the world today are likely to experience a form of it at some point in their lives.
It is marked by uneasiness or a feeling of being unprepared prior to or during a test, especially an important or high-stakes test, whether it is related to a formal educational program, the workplace or other setting in which a person must provide information in a testlike format to achieve a desired outcome. Test anxiety is a serious condition for a great number of people who suffer from an imagined lack of preparation, confidence, dread, fear or inability to concentrate prior to or while actually taking a test.
Like other forms of anxiety, test anxiety is rooted in some type of fear, especially the fear of failure. Among its more common cognitive symptoms – prior to and/or during and even after testing – are the following: easily distracted; can’t understand directions or questions; and low expectations of scoring well. Physical symptoms may include sweaty palms, upset stomach, headache, difficulty breathing and muscle tension, among others.
Test anxiety has long been a major area of study at the Institute of HeartMath, where researchers have established that negative emotions millions of test takers experience before or during tests can lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed. It is also marked by a kind of "noise" or mental static in the brain that can actually block the ability to retrieve what is stored in the memory and impair the ability to comprehend and reason. So for many people, the fear of performing poorly on tests is actually realized.
HeartMath’s extensive studies on test anxiety, including the widely acclaimed TestEdge® National Demonstration Study (TENDS) conducted with federal funding, have led to the development of the successful TestEdge® learning programs that already have helped tens of thousands of children and adults increase their confidence and improve test scores and overall academic performance.
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For additional information and understanding, refer to the Test Anxiety page of the Solutions For Stress section on the IHM Web site. Click here to read a summary of TENDS, which conclusively established the existence of widespread test anxiety among students and the effectiveness of HeartMath interventions at helping them overcome it.
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