*NEWS*WHY SMART ASSES CRACK FROM PRESSURE

[Anonymous]

<>Why smart people crack under pressure
‘When they begin to worry, then
they’re in trouble‘

People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also
be the most likely to crumble under pressure.

A new study finds that individuals with high
working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under
pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no
constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be
affected by pressure.

“The pressure causes verbal worries, like ‘Oh no, I can’t
screw up,’” said Sian Beilock, assistant professor of psychology at Miami
University of Ohio. “These thoughts reside in the working memory.” And that
takes up space that would otherwise be pondering the task at hand.

“When they begin to worry, then they’re in trouble,”
Beilock told LiveScience. “People with lower working-memory capacities are not
using that capacity to begin with, so they’re not affected by pressure.”

The findings are detailed this week’s issue of
Psychological Science.

Working memory, also known as short-term memory, holds
information that is relevant to performance and ensures task focus. It’s what
allows us to remember and retrieve information from an early step of a long
task, such as long-division math.

“In these math problems students have to perform
subtraction and division, and if you’re trying to hold information in your
memory and you start worrying about performance, then you can’t use your entire
mental capacity to do the math,” Beilock explained.

The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from
Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities. The
students were divided into two groups, a high working-memory group (HWM) and a
low working-memory group (LWM). Each person was given a 24-problem math test in
a low-pressure environment. The HWM group did substantially better.

Then the two groups were given the same test, but were
told that they were part of a “team effort” and an improved score would earn the
team a cash reward. They were also told their performance was being evaluated by
math professors.

Under this higher, real world pressure situation, the HWM
group’s score dropped to that of the LWM group, which was not affected by the
increased pressure.

Since working memory is known to predict many
higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of
high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who
will succeed in future academic endeavors.

[Author]

February 12, 2005 at 10:16 AM