Anxiety And Test Anxiety

Introduce topic Stress is an every-day issue that humans experience one way or another. Stress can have motivating factors, but in other cases, will cause negative effects such as impairment of memory. Stress and anxiety are a normal part of life when it is occasional and temporary, but when frequent, it can become pathological or a disorder as it begins to interfere with daily life such as work, school, and relationships (Mah et al, 2015). With an abundance of stress one can routinely become unease, worried, or nervous about an event that has an uncertain outcome.

This study will aim to determine the relationship between memory and stress while using a real-world implication of test anxiety in college students.

What is test anxiety? Test anxiety is a feeling of agitation or distress that can be a physical or mental response. Some describe it as feeling ‘butterflies in your stomach,’ headache, or sweaty palms before or during an exam (Academic Skills Center, 2016). Test anxiety is a type of

(2014) tested the interaction between anxiety and WMC by using math tests, where participants had to solve as many math problems as they could in in a set time limit. They found that for individuals with low WMC, increases in trait anxiety were related to decreases in cognitive test performance. For those with High WMC, an increase in trait anxiety was associated with higher test scores. They hypothesize, for the high-WMC individuals, this is due to an increased motivation to do well on the task, which is driven by anxiety (Owens et al., 2014). In addition, ACT suggest that high-anxiety individuals will be motivated to perform well on tasks to avoid negative results, but this can result in poor task efficiency. Therefore, high-anxious participants may exert extra effort or need more time to complete tasks. It is possible that if the high-anxious participants were given more time to complete tests, it could have improved their scores (Owens et al.,