Everyone has feelings of anxiety at some point in their life; however, some people find it hard to control their worries. Their feelings of anxiety are more constant and can often affect their daily lives.
The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Waterloo and published in journal Brain Sciences, concluded that people with moderate levels of anxiety are better at recalling events and details. This study has eighty undergraduate students from the University of Waterloo (64 females) completed the experiment for partial course credit. Forty participants were randomly assigned to a deep encoding instruction groupand 40 were randomly assigned to a shallow encoding group. All participants completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS). The scales contains 42 items, 14 of which are dedicated to measuring each separate construct. An individual item consists of a statement that participants are instructed to provide a rating indicating how much the statement relates to them over the past week. Ratings are made on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 to 3, where 0 represents no relation to the statement, and 3 indicates that the statement relates to them a lot. Participants were also divided into two separate groups based on a median of the anxiety ratings for the sample which are high anxiety and low anxiety.
Findings from the study suggest that while people with manageable levels of anxiety had better memory recall, that wasn't the case for people who described themselves as highly anxious. Emotional events from the past can taint our perception of the present, making current circumstances more memorable. When we constrain our memory search to information or events encountered within a negative context, or learnt using a negative mode of processing, some memory benefit held by those thoughts may be conferred unto incidental stimuli within our current environment. Of note, this downstream memory bias was significant only in individuals with high levels of trait anxiety. Anxiety can engender a mode of cognitive processing that taints or colours otherwise neutral information.
The authors said in the release that these findings could be important for teachers and educators. If students are super anxious before taking tests or being asked to remember details from lessons, it could affect their memory recall and hurt them in the end. Fernandes says in the press release that "lightening the mood when teaching could be beneficial." Moreover, because people with high levels of anxiety tend to let emotions affect memory recall. Therefore, it's important to know what biases we have and how they affect the way we view things.
The authors said in the release that these findings could be important for teachers and educators. If students are super anxious before taking tests or being asked to remember details from lessons, it could affect their memory recall and hurt them in the end. Fernandes says in the press release that "lightening the mood when teaching could be beneficial." Moreover, because people with high levels of anxiety tend to let emotions affect memory recall. Therefore, it's important to know what biases we have and how they affect the way we view things.
References
http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/8/1/6/htm
都看得懂，不過我覺得第二段可以拆成兩段比較好閱讀，至於寫得好不好我不知道，因為我英文沒有很好XDD
回覆刪除I think it will be better if the key sentences can be highlighted :-)
回覆刪除Wow, who knew that a little anxiety can be beneficial to memory? Does this explain why some students perform well on exams although they were nervous before taking it?
回覆刪除Well written article!
very interesting! we do need a proper amount of anxiety to achieve best performance. under-level anxiety might let as missed out details that were actually important!
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