writing increases test scores

Everyone has experienced at some point in their life that anxious feeling just before taking an important test. For some, this type of high anxiety can decrease performance leading to lower test scores. Some good news on how to circumvent this has just emerged in a new paper published this week in Science Magazine (vol 331:211-213). Knowing that long-term journal keeping or writing is a therapeutic approach to alleviate depression in some patients, Drs. Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock hypothesized that writing about the fears of the upcoming test just prior to taking the test may help alleviate some anxiety and increase test scores. The researchers tested high school and college students by having them write about their fears about the test 10 minutes prior to test taking and found that this exercise did indeed increase test scores. The writing, they found, had to be about the anxieties they were feeling (termed expressive writing) and that writing about just any topic didn’t produce the same results. This meant that a mere distraction from the test wasn’t enough to reduce anxiety and increase scores, but that discussing the anxiety was important. Overall, this study suggests that a simple writing exercise just prior to an important test may help to increase test scores.