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Working memory is essential for understanding the phenomenon of test anxiety. Working memory is a limited capacity system, so the addition of stress and anxiety reduce the resources available to focus on relevant information. By identifying cognitive interventions, it is possible to reverse the effects of test anxiety.

Test Anxiety
The goal of most testing situations is to measure a person’s level of knowledge or skill in a particular area. If the testing situation itself becomes a factor in that person’s ability to reach optimal achievement, there can be negative consequences, especially if certain groups are disproportionally affected. Test Anxiety refers to impaired performance created by feelings of stress and discomfort in evaluative situations.

Liebert and Morris attributed this to two main components: worry and emotionality. Worry refers to cognitive factors, such as negative expectations or feelings of inadequacy. Emotionality is the physical symptoms, such as increased heart rate, muscle tension, or butterflies. Both are aversive elements that can create anxiety, but it is the cognitive factors that have the strongest connection to performance.

Numerous studies have suggested that highly test-anxious subjects describe themselves in more negative terms, report that they experience more performance related thoughts during an exam, and are generally more self-blaming and self-concerned than low-anxious subjects. These negative factors consume a person’s attention with what is referred to as task-irrelevant activity.

Working memory
It is important to understand the elements of working memory before connecting them to test anxiety. The model of working memory was developed to improve the understanding of the short-term memory system as originally proposed by psychologists Baddeley and Hitch. The central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer are the main mechanisms that work together to allow temporary storage and early processing of information. As indicated by the diagram, the central executive allocates attentional resources to other components. The phonological loop refers to the temporary storage of verbal information, and the visuospatial sketchpad is responsible for the storage of visual information. The episodic buffer integrates this information into a form that makes sense.

As you are reading this page, you are using many different elements of your working memory. Currently, your visuospatial sketchpad is helping you make sense of the spatial relationships between words, while the phonological loop is helping you verbalize the words in your head. This is possible with the help of the central executive, which guides your attention to the words on the page, and coordinates the other elements of your working memory. It also communicates with the episodic buffer, which keeps track of the information and combines it into coherent sentences. This is an example of a person’s working memory performing effectively, but these functions do not always perform their best under stressful situations, like testing.

Working Memory and Emotion
As discussed previously, people who suffer from test anxiety are more likely to experience negative cognitions while in evaluative situations. It is these thoughts and emotions that interfere with the central executive, and create distracting task-irrelevant activity. This is especially important because test anxious persons have been shown to bias their attention towards threatening and anxiety related stimuli more than nonemotional stimuli.

According to the attentional capture hypothesis, emotional stimuli are very difficult to tune out. They will often dominate a person’s thoughts, and any attempt to suppress them demands working memory resources. If the central executive is dividing resources between the aversive cognitions and the task-relevant material, the person’s ability to use the relevant information on a test will suffer.

Attentional Control Theory of Working Memory
A recent theory involving anxiety and working memory is the Attentional Control theory. Based on the earlier Processing Control Theory, this theory assumes that anxiety largely impairs the processing efficiency aspect of working memory rather than the performance effectiveness component. Processing efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to attain effective performance. Therefore, this theory suggests that students high in test anxiety will have to allocate more resources to the task at hand than non-test anxiety students in order to achieve the same results.

Attentional Control Theory also assumes that anxiety primarily affects functioning of the central executive component of working memory rather than the phonological loop or visuospatial sketchpad. Specifically anxiety affects the attentional control aspect of the central executive and its inhibition and attentional shifting functions. Attentional control is the balance between the two attentional systems, the goal-directed system and the stimulus-driven system. Research suggests that anxiety disrupts the balance between the two systems, therefore causing a reduction in the processing efficiency of the central executive.

Anxiety and Working Memory Capacity
There has been some research to support the theory that individuals with a high working memory capacity are somewhat buffered against the effects of performance anxiety. A study by Johnson and Gronlund found that individuals' performances on a task showed a significant decrease in accuracy when the participant had low or average working memory capacity, but did not significantly decrease when the participant had a high level of working memory. Further research has found that participants with both lower working memory capacity and high test anxiety made more errors.

Interventions Using Working Memory Related Techniques
One cognitive intervention that has been shown to be effective at reducing anxiety is attentional cognitive bias modification. The main method used for the intervention is a dot probe task. In this method, participants view negative and neutral stimuli on a screen and respond only to the neutral stimulus. This method attempts to overcome the attentional bias shown by high anxiety participants, who tend to focus on the more potent negative stimuli rather than the neutral stimuli. When participants are trained to focus on the neutral stimuli while ignoring the negative stimuli, working memory capacity is less strained and is available to place more focus on the task at hand.

Cognitive interventions in general do have many limitations. Some cognitive strategies have even been shown to be detrimental to performance, particularly strategies such as thought suppression. Only a small, recent body of research addresses cognitive interventions, and more research needs to be done to support these new techniques.