All tagged test anxiety
In this week’s post, Cindy and I (Althea) talk about our work with medical student learners. We have both worked for medical schools for a little over a year now and we’ve learned some things! We discuss common challenges for learning in medical school, efficient learning strategies, learning in the context of attentional disorders and anxiety, and what it means to prepare future healers.
Last month, I put out an “Office Hours Video” on Patreon about a paper investigating how undergraduates cope with anxiety in intro biology courses. What is an “Office Hours Video”, you ask? They are special “thank yous” for our Patreon supporters. Our blog, podcast, and downloadable materials …
Does test anxiety cause poorer performance on exams? Meta-analyses show that students with higher test anxiety tend to perform worse on exams (1). We also know that anxiety can affect cognitive processes through working memory capacity (2). Therefore, the general consensus is that test anxiety interferes with our working memory, which in turn leads to poorer exam performance… However, a recent study with German medical students found that test anxiety did not predict exam performance when prior knowledge was controlled for, claiming strong evidence against the interference hypothesis (3).
For a lot of students, final exams create a sense of dread and a lot of anxiety. As if they weren’t worried enough, that worry can actually cause worse performance on exams (1). One of the mechanisms for the lower performance may have to do with working memory.
