Feb. 26, 2007 — Worrying about a math test will do more than set your stomach churning. Researchers say tying up the brain with stress-related emotions actually leaves less short-term memory available for computations.
"Worry is more than a common complaint," said University of Nevada psychologist Mark Ashcraft. "It turns out it really does make a difference in how students are doing in math."
The researchers found that highly proficient students are more susceptible to math stress than their lesser-able colleagues who typically turn to short cuts, such as guessing and estimating, to solve difficult math problems. When anxiety blocks working memory, however, the talented students are left with fewer resources to correctly answer questions.
"They did them quicker but more incorrectly," said Sian Beilock, a University of Chicago associate professor in psychology. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts."
People with a high level of working memory depend on it heavily during problem solving, the researchers found.
Beilock and her colleagues tested about 100 undergraduates with strong levels of working memory, a form of short-term memory that maintains a limited amount of information in an active state and prevents interference from irrelevant information.
The students were given a series of comprehensive math problems and told they would be paid for correct answers so long as a randomly selected partner also correctly solved the problem.
