Here is the third and final part in the series dealing with test anxiety. If you missed the first two parts, they are located here and here. Enjoy!
Numerous studies have shown that when students feel anxious about performing on an exam, they worry about the situation. These worries then compromise the students’ working memory. How can we help students alleviate these worries, thus freeing up precious working memory? The simple act of writing about and expressing their worries before a critical exam can do exactly that.
In one particular study, students were subjected to two math exams. All students took the first exam under the same conditions, which was relatively stress-free. Then, using various methods, the pressure was applied to both groups to make the second exam as pressure-packed as possible. In between those exams, the control group was asked to sit quietly for 10 minutes. The experimentation group was asked to write as openly as possible about their feelings and worries regarding the test. Everyone then took the second test.
The control group choked under the pressure. They showed a 12% decrease in their test scores between the first and second exams. The expressive writing group actually demonstrated a 5% increase in their test scores over the non-pressure filled first exam. Not only did the expressive writing assignment help students avoid choking under pressure, it actually helped them rise to the occasion and perform better when the pressure was on. Researchers were further able to demonstrate that the more the students used anxiety-related words, the greater the effects.
This act of being honest with ones self, with facing your fears, provides a very valuable benefit to students. And it only took 10 minutes of their times right before the exam! We see how this concept plays out in other areas as well.
Take the example of David Price, a professional baseball player for the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2008, he arrived in the major leagues only months after being drafted out of college. Shortly thereafter, he found himself facing the New York Yankees in the playoffs. He entered the game as a reliever late in game 7 of the American League Championship Series, with everything on the line. He would go on to clinch the game for his team and send them on to the World Series for the first time ever. Here is how he described his feelings as he got ready to enter the game:
I took it back to the same preparation as college. I did my visualization. I’d envisioned myself failing now and again. It’s human. When you’ve done that envisioning, you’ve seen it before. You don’t always envision the good stuff because you’re going to give up that home run, you’re going to give up that go-ahead run or game winning hit. It’s part of the game.
Price has done his own mental journaling. He knows what the stakes are; he knows he might not get the results he would like. He is being realistic with himself. He has faced his fears, and is therefore no longer intimidated by them. His working memory has been freed of worry. Also note that he has practiced all of this before – he used the same preparation he did in college. “All the pressure was right there, but I wasn’t going to think about it,” Price would say. “Pressure is perceived. If I don’t put added pressure on myself, I’ll be fine.” 
The same lesson should be taught to students, you don’t have to be perfect - perform your best and face your fears. Journaling can be the key to establishing this mindset right before a critical exam.
Eliminate Negative Stereotypes
Students who are aware of the fact that they are being stereotyped perform much worse on exams than those who are not aware of such stereotypes. This is known as the stereotype threat, and the threat is both real and damaging.
Take this experiment as an example of the stereotype threat. A group of students who scored very well on standardized math tests were gathered at the University of Michigan. The students were divided into two groups, with a combination of males and females in both groups. The first group was told before their math exam that the exam they were about to take had shown differences between the sexes in terms of scores. In this group, males outperformed females on the exam. The second group was told that their exam was gender-neutral. On this exam, females performed just as well as males.
Or take this example of the stereotype threat. A professor of Psychology at Tufts University, Julio Garcia, gathered a group of athletic, white students. A white instructor lead them through a series of exercises: jump as high as they could, do a standing broad jump, and do as many pushups as possible in 20 seconds. Then the students were asked to do each of these exercises again, and as expected they improved in each of the tasks. Then Garcia had a second group of students attempt the same experiment, except this time the students had an African-American instructor. The white students then failed to improve on their vertical jumps, and some jumped less high. The white students showed the same improvements they previously had in all of the other exercises. The explanation? There is no stereotype regarding how many pushups white athletes can do as compared to their African-American counterparts, but there is the prevalent stereotype regarding how high white men can jump.
What it all comes down to is that when your working memory has been compromised by thoughts surrounding the negative stereotype, you do not perform as well as you possibly can.
This can be particularly damaging to law school students. Working memory is housed in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Tasks that are more verbal in nature, rather than spatial, take place in the left prefrontal cortex. Virtually all tasks assigned in law school are verbal in nature, rather than spatial. When pressure filled exams creates worries or doubts in student’s brains, these worries or doubts are also verbal in nature – they are internal monologues in the student’s brain – and thus also taking place in the left prefrontal cortex. So when a student is aware of negative stereotypes, not only does this affect their working memory, it affects the specific part of their working memory that is being called upon to perform on law school exams.
The most significant stereotypes we work against are those based on prior performance. For example, a student might be confronted with the fact that students in previous years who graduated with subpar GPA only passed the bar exam at a 30% rate. Their overall law school GPA is subpar, therefore they believe the odds are against them. This is a real, definable stereotype, but there is more to the equation, and that is what we try to demonstrate to students.
For example, we can show them that if they complete all required tasks during bar exam preparation, that their chances of passing jump to 80%, regardless of their GPA. This helps motivate the student to do the work, but also shifts the focus for them as well. This is actually one of the main reasons we track statistics – to provide a positive framework and confidence for students getting ready to take the bar exam.
Other techniques discussed in this paper can also help students avoid the implications of the negative stereotype, such as journaling and meditation. The key is to clear working memory of these thoughts so that cognitive performance can be maximized.
Meditation generally involves a practice of clearing one’s mind. For example, most people who are performing Zen meditation are focusing on one thing at a time – typically their breathing. They must clear their minds of everything else. If something else pops into their mind, they must be able to deal with it quickly and discard it. As a result, individuals who practice meditation have been shown to be able to control their thoughts much better than those who do not practice meditation.
The benefits of meditation thus become very clear considering everything that has been discussed to this point. Performance on pressure filled exams is dependent upon full function of a students working memory. Anything that can creep into the student’s brain and could compromise their working memory will act as a detriment to cognitive performance. So it would make sense that those people who have been trained to control their thoughts and discard distracting thoughts would be better able to clear their working memory of distractions on an important exam.
So , do you have to spend years training to become a Zen master in order to reap the benefits of meditation? Not exactly, though it would be beneficial. One study showed that three months of meditation practice reduced people’s tendency to have their attention derailed by unwanted thoughts or emotions. In another study, students with no meditation experience were instructed to perform 10 minutes of meditation and mindful breathing prior to an exam. Those who did so performed 5% better than those who did not. This may seem like a minor increase, but there is not much of an investment here either. And on the bar exam, a 5% increase in performance can often make the difference between passing and failing.
All of these benefits probably explain why so many successful people practice meditation. Tiger Woods credits meditation with helping him develop his ability to perform in the clutch. Former Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls head coach Phil Jackson advocated meditation to increase his player’s performance, including the great Michael Jordan. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton also tout meditation as a tool for performance under pressure. 
Student’s ability to perform well under pressure usually relates do their ability to manage their working memory. More working memory means more cognitive horsepower to devote to complex mental tasks, such as taking an exam. By following some of the suggestions in this paper, students should be able to maximize their working memory capabilities, and perform at their best when it matters the most.
Sian Beilock, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To, Free Press Publishing, 2010.
Paul Sullivan, Clutch: Excel Under Pressure, Portfolio/Penguin Publishing, 2010.
Larry Lage (June 26, 2008). Mediate makes the most of his brush with Tiger, The Seattle Times, Associated Press. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock, Writing About Testing Worries Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom, Science Magazine, January 14, 2011 (Vol 331).
Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?, Jossey-BassPublishing, 2009.
S.J. Spencer and C.M. Steele and D.M. Quinn, “Stereotype threat and women’s math performance.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35 (1999).
Malcolm Gladwell, The Art of Failure, The New Yorker, August 21 & 28, 2000.
 “After completing the pretest, students were given a high-pressure scenario based on common pressures: monetary incentives (which stand in for scholarships associated with high test scores) and peer pressure and social evaluation (which comes from judgments of test scores from admissions committees, teachers, parents and peers).” Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock, Writing About Testing Worries Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom, Science Magazine, January 14, 2011 (Vol 331) at 212.
 In an additional experiment, there were three groups given the second exam – the control group, the expressive writing group, and a group of students asked to write about something completely unrelated to the test. The expressive writing group still performed the best, but the unrelated writing group as a whole still performed better than the control group. Researchers then analyzed the responses from the unrelated writing group, and found it was those who used anxiety related words, such as “I am afraid,” that performed better, while others who id not use such langauge did not perform better than the control group. Id.
 A full recounting of this story is in the book Clutch by Paul Sullivan. Sullivan details how Price came to be able to rise to the occasion, while another player on the opposite team in the same game, Alex Rodriguez, failed to do the same.
 These statistics cited are in the ballpark of what we sometimes see, but in no way are meant to reflect our actual statistics.
 There are many books and articles out there on how to develop proper meditation techniques, and it is a topic well beyond the scope of this paper. However, basic mindful breathing exercises are a simple, easy way to get students started. Simply ask students to find a comfortable spot and spend 10 minutes focusing on their breathing – count to four while breathing in, count to eight while breathing out. If anything comes into your mind, accept it but then try to push it from you mind and return to a focus on your breathing. This type of exercise has also been shown to reduce blood pressure and stress levels.