It does not come as a surprise to me that researchers are confirming that test anxiety can play a factor in test results. Although they are just talking about the subject of math, I think those of us who freak out over tests of any kind limit our chances of doing our best. I once sat for thirty minutes unable to even think about answering test questions because I was so nervous. This was in a graduate school class, and I just froze. Luckily, it wasn't a timed test, and I was able to work on it way into the night. Some people are able to breeze in, take tests, and leave without checking a thing. For those of us who can't, the results of this study are a no brainer. The researchers found that:
Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas who studies the problem.
Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts," said University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock.
Ultimately, she said, "It may not be wise to rely completely on scores to predict who will succeed."
The researchers learned that the working memory is taxed more with harder computations. This is where some of my former sixth graders would have said, "Duh!"