Test Anxiety
Test Anxiety is Really Common among college students! It is normal to
feel some level of anxiety or stress regarding upcoming exams, papers or
presentations. Most people can reduce anxiety levels through
preparation.
Start work even in small amounts and a feeling of control will come
from your activity. Procrastinate and you will only feed your anxiety and
worry!
These articles may help you develop strategies for successfully dealing
with "normal" test anxiety.
Some Facts Psychologists Know About…
Test and Performance Anxieties
Source: The University of Cincinnati
Many students experience some nervousness or apprehension before,
during, or after an exam. This kind of anxiety can be a powerful
motivator. However, some student experience test-related anxiety to
such a degree that it can lead to poor performance and interfere with
their learning.
Symptoms of test anxiety
• Physical - headaches, nausea or
diarrhea, extreme body
temperature changes, excessive
sweating, shortness or breath,
light-headedness or fainting,
rapid heart beat, and/or dry
mouth.
• Emotional - excessive feelings
of fear, disappointment, anger,
depression, uncontrollable
crying or laughing, feelings of
helplessness
• Behavioral - fidgeting, pacing, substance abuse, avoidance
• Cognitive - racing thoughts, 'going blank', difficulty
concentrating, negative self-talk, feelings of dread, comparing
yourself to others, difficulty organizing your thoughts.
During exams, do you...
• feel like you "go blank"?
• become frustrated?
• find yourself thinking "I can't do this" or "I'm stupid"?
• feel like the room is closing in on you?
• feel your heart racing or find it difficult to breathe?
• suddenly "know" the answers after turning in the test?
• score much lower than on homework or papers?
When performing, do you…
• become distracted?
• feel overwhelmed?
• miss important cues from your surroundings?
• "go blank" and forget what you are supposed to do?
• have distracting thoughts of failure or a poor performance?
• perform more poorly than in practice?
If you answer "yes" to some of these questions, you may be experiencing
test or performance anxiety.
What causes test anxiety?
Test anxiety can develop for a number of reasons. There may be some
prior negative experience with test taking that serves as the activating
event. Students who have experienced, or have a fear of, blanking out on
tests or the inability to perform in testing situations can develop
anticipatory anxiety. Worrying about how anxiety will effect you can be
as debilitating as the anxiety itself. This kind of anxiety can build as the
testing situation approaches, and can interfere with the student's ability
to prepare adequately. Lack of preparation is another factor that can
contribute to test anxiety. Poor time management, poor study habits, and
lack of organization can lead to a student feeling overwhelmed. Student's
who are forced to cram at the last minute will feel less confident about
the material covered than those who have been able to follow a
structured plan for studying. Being able to anticipate what the exam will
cover, and knowing all the information has been covered during the
study sessions, can help students to enter the testing situation with a
more positive attitude.
Lack of confidence, fear of failure, and other negative thought processes
may also contribute to test anxiety. The pressure to perform well on
exams is a great motivator unless it is so extreme that it becomes
irrational. Perfectionism and feelings of unworthiness provide
unreasonable goals to achieve through testing situations. When a
student's self-esteem is too closely tied to the outcome of any one
academic task, the results can be devastating. In these situations,
students may spend more time focusing on the negative consequences of
failure, than preparing to succeed.
What are Test and Performance Anxieties?
Anxiety is a natural human response to a threatening situation. Anxiety
is a form of the "fight-or-flight" response-the body and mind become
aroused and alert to prepare for attack or to escape from a threat. Test
and performance anxieties describe responses specific to evaluative
situations-situations in which you are being observed or evaluated by
others. The primary "threat" in these situations is the possibility of
failure and loss of esteem. Depending on the intensity of the anxiety
response, the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive components of
anxiety can interfere with your ability to perform the task at hand (e.g.,
test score, athletic or artistic performance). If you experience test or
performance anxiety, you are not alone-approximately 20% of US
college students experience symptoms of test anxiety and most athletes
and artists experience performance anxiety at some point in their careers.
Test or performance anxiety typically occurs:
1. in the presence of a difficult, threatening or challenging situation,
2. when you believe that you are inadequate or incapable of
meeting the challenge, and,
3. you fear the consequences of possible failure.
Arousal and Anxiety
In order to perform well in a challenging situation, you must be
psychologically and physically alert. You certainly won't perform well
on an exam or in an event if you are nearly asleep! This level of
"alertness" is also called arousal. Some degree of arousal is essential for
optimal performance. Increasing arousal is the idea behind "psyching
up"- and it works - in many cases, psyching up enhances performance.
The problem is that when the intensity of arousal gets too high, we often
begin to feel nervous and tense and experience anxiety. At this level,
anxiety becomes distracting and performance declines - we get "psyched
out." For optimal performance, you need to keep your arousal at an
intermediate level - psyched up, but not psyched out!
Optimal Arousal
So, how do you know when you are "up" enough, but not too much, for
an exam or performance? When psyched up, you'll be able to focus on
the task at hand and performance will feel natural. When psyched out
and anxiety takes over, you may experience:
• distracting thoughts of failure
• an inability to pick out important environmental cues
• becoming distracted by irrelevant environmental cues
• interpreting the results of physical arousal (muscle tension, heart
rate, respiration) as signs of fear
• excessive muscle tension
• attempting to avoid or escape the situation
• giving up
Some tips for reducing test anxiety
Fortunately, there are several things that can be done to make test
anxiety more manageable:
• Preparation - develop good study habits, spreading studying over
several days; ask for additional help when needed; eat good
foods, get adequate rest, and exercise to build energy; attend
class regularly and complete all assignments in a timely manner;
make and take practice tests
• Keep a positive attitude - develop reasonable expectations; do not
allow your grades to become dependent on the outcome of one
exam; avoid negative and irrational thoughts about catastrophic
results; set up a system of rewards for dedicated studying and
good test performance; encourage yourself
• Relaxation techniques - deep breathing exercises, imagery and
visualization, and muscle relaxation techniques can help to
increase focus an concentration; don't arrive too early or get
distracted by others preparing for the test; check to make sure
you have everything you will need;
• Learn good test-taking skills - do not panic if you can't remember
something right away; answer questions you know well first, and
then go back to other ones; read questions and directions
carefully before you begin; outline essays before you begin to
write; keep short-answers short; don't spend a lot of time
reviewing answers
Additional coping Strategies
The techniques for dealing with test or performance anxiety can be
divided into 5 basic principles:
1. Be healthy: If you are physically and emotionally exhausted,
your body and mind are less able to tolerate stress and anxiety.
You can improve your resistance to anxiety by getting adequate
rest, eating appropriately, and taking care of your physical health.
If you find you don't have time to be healthy, consider seeking
assistance with time management.
2. Be prepared: Practice... practice... practice... study... study...
study. Sounds a bit repetitive, but nothing can help reduce
anxiety like confidence. In fact, if you over-prepare a bit, your
responses become more automatic, and your performance will be
less affected by anxiety. Preparation for an exam may include
improving your study and test-taking skills. Be on time and have
all the "tools" you may need for an exam (e.g., #2 pencils,
calculator, pen). Finally, learn and practice the anxiety
management techniques in the following points 3-5.
3. Practice the performance: The time limits of an exam, the tied
score of a game, or the audience at your performance-all are
stimuli that increase your level of arousal and add to your
experience of anxiety. If you practice under similar conditions,
you'll become less sensitive to these stimuli. For an exam, work
through a practice exam (or two!) under the same time
constraints that will exist when you take the exam (don't look at
your notes, create as many conditions of the actual exam as
possible). For an athletic or artistic performance, practice with
distractions or with an audience. For conditions that you cannot
actually reproduce, create them in your mind-close your eyes and
"see" the audience in the seats, give the play-by-play of the last
seconds of a tied game. Imagination is a powerful tool-it can help
you be less anxious when reality hits!
4. Regulate your arousal level: In cases of anxiety, the goal is to
lower your level of arousal. Some of the most effective ways
involve altering your physical responses like breathing and
muscle tension.
o Deep breathing: When anxious, we often take shallow
breaths. We feel like we aren't getting enough air, and get
more anxious. If you focus on breathing deeply and
slowly, this cycle is interrupted and the body and mind
begin to relax. To learn to breathe deeply, place your
hand on your stomach and inhale in a way that makes
your abdomen expand. As you exhale, your abdomen
should move inward. Practice taking 10-15 slow deep
breaths in a row, 2-3 times per day-training your body to
breathe deeply and relax. Then, during a stressful
situation, focus on taking 2-3 deep breaths, and your body
will relax.
o Progressive muscle relaxation: We also tense our muscles
when anxious. Consciously relaxing your muscles will
help your body and mind relax. Practice muscle
relaxation during deep breathing by focusing on a
particular muscle group (e.g., shoulders) and alternatively
tensing and relaxing the muscle. Then, focus on releasing
all of the tension in the muscle, repeating "relax" in your
mind. Add muscle relaxation to deep breathing in a
stressful situation.
o Reduce distractions: Distractions are additional stimuli
that increase arousal. Explore ways to reduce the
distractions in your immediate environment, e.g. sit in a
back corner of the room, take a sweater so you aren't
distracted by being cold, change seats if you are
distracted by the person sitting next to you.
o Rituals: Rituals are repetitive behaviors that give us a
sense of familiarity, help us focus, and reduce anxiety.
The basketball player who bounces the ball three times
before shooting a free-throw has a ritual. You may
already have some rituals-getting a drink of water just
before an exam or using a particular pencil or pen. Just a
note of caution-make sure your rituals are not harmful or
distracting to yourself or others (tapping your pencil 10
times before each question may annoy your classmates!).
5. Control the fear: The underlying source of test or performance
anxiety is the fear of failure. Pay attention to what you are
thinking and saying to yourself in anxious situations. This self-
talk will likely reflect an expectation or fear of failure. You can
begin to control this fear or change the expectation by changing
your self-talk.
o Positive self-talk: Purposefully filling your mind with
positive statements about yourself and your abilities can
offset or crowd-out the negative self-talk. Even if you
don't believe the positives, say them anyway-"I'm
ready…I can do this…Do it!" Determine the most
important positive messages for yourself by writing down
your 3-4 most common negative thoughts (e.g., "I can't do
this"). Next, write down the opposite for each statement
("I can do this"). Repeat the positives to yourself daily for
at least two weeks, and again just before and during the
test or performance.
o On-task self-talk: Counter distractions and help yourself
focus on the task at hand by telling yourself what to do-
talk yourself through the task step-by-step, and tell
yourself you're succeeding! Thinking about past mistakes
or future consequences is not helpful. Keep your mind
focused on the present-one thing at a time!
o Gaining perspective: Sometimes the negative thoughts
people have in stressful situations focus on potentially
drastic consequences of failure. In most cases, these
drastic consequences are much more severe than the
reality of the situation-this is called catastrophizing.
Focusing on such catastrophic consequences increases
anxiety and interferes with performance. It is important to
recognize that one mistake does not equal failure and that
one bad performance does not mean you're worthless.
Take some time to evaluate the most likely consequences
of your performance. If you find that you tend to
catastrophize, develop some phrases that are more
realistic and repeat these phrases to yourself prior to and
during the exam or performance. An example might be
"This is just one exam."
However, some symptoms aren't "normal" and may require some help to
overcome. If you experience the following symptoms prior to taking an
exam or similar action it may be best for you to seek assistance.
• Sweating
• Heart palpitations
• Shortness of breath
• Dizziness
• Nausea
These symptoms may indicate a condition known as Panic Attacks.
Many students experience Panic Attacks. Exams and other stressful
situations seem to trigger them. Your campus counseling service is an
excellent resource if you are experiencing these symptoms - contact
them about how to schedule an appointment to meet with a counselor.
They can help you develop strategies for controlling test anxiety.
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