Test anxiety in college students (A RESEARCH PAPER)

Outline

Tests: this part of the paper argues on the negative aspects of test anxiety and facts about following tests that are a part of academic life: SAT? TOEFL GMAT.

Test Anxiety: This part of the paper argues on the performance of well-prepared student and its reason for being low.

Physical problems: In this section of the paper researchers argue on the physical problems related to test anxiety that are given as follows: stomach ache? head ach? migraine and back ache. Psychological problems: Psychological part of the paper mainly argues on depression? panic attacks due to this type of anxiety. Remedies: This is concluding part of the essay in which we try to convince reader on presented remedies to overcome the problem of test anxiety.

Test anxiety in college students

Thesis Statement

Test anxiety may also jeopardize assessment validity in the cognitive domain and constitute a major source of 'test bias', in that anxious examinees may perform less well than their ability and skills would otherwise allow.

Introduction

Many students have the ability to do well on exams, but perform poorly because of their debilitating levels of test anxiety. Indeed, test anxiety figures prominently as one of the key villains in the ongoing drama surrounding psycho-educational testing, as a source of both scholastic underachievement and psychological distress (Sarason, 29).

Test anxiety research has prospered, in part, due to the increasing personal salience of test situations for people in modern society, making tests and their long-term consequences significant educational, social, and clinical problems for many.

Discussion

The emotional overriding of logical thought and memory retrieval has been visually illustrated through medical imaging technology. Imaging pictures can show how the basal ganglia (the test anxiety regulator) becomes overactive when an individual feels a test anxiety threat. The overactivity of the basal ganglia immobilizes thought processes. When an individual perceives a threat, the hypothalamus (the limbic system) provides an automatic, uncontrolled reaction to a perceived emotional or physical threat, acting as a circuit breaker between the prefrontal cortex (the center of purposeful thought in the brain) and the limbic (emotional center of the brain) systems (Matthews, 11).

When the hypothalamus sends a signal, the limbic system goes into action. Emotions take over, and thinking and problem solving stop. Reactivation of the cerebral cortex (the thought processor) is not possible until the perceived threat no longer exists. The scientific evidence of imaging provided by those in the medical profession thus gives an objective explanation of test anxiety that can be easily understood when related in lay terms. Understanding that test anxiety happens and what causes it to happen can be the beginning of coping with test anxiety and overcoming it (Mandler, 66).

Behavioural Measures

Another test anxiety assessment technique is the measurement of various behaviours. The presence and frequency of certain behaviours are rated by others (e.g. clinicians, experimenters). A review of ratings by others for the purposes of clinical evaluation is beyond the scope of this entry. The behaviours used to represent an indication of the ...