Confidence Training Improves Test Scores Richard Driscoll, PhD Confidence Training Improves Test Scores drD@testanxietycontrol.com 865 771-1403

Handicap Half a letter grade. Highly test-anxious students perform about half a letter grade (12 percentile points) below their low-anxiety peers, much of which can be attributed to the anxiety impairment. "Kristin would tutor her friends in algebra at lunch time, and then fail the test the next hour while her friends went on to pass it."

Prevalence About 18% of students have high test anxiety and another 18% have "moderately high" anxiety. So about a fifth of our students are more afraid of school tests than they ever were of spooks or ghosts or goblins or anything else that creeps or leaps or flaps around in the dark of the night. The majority of students rate "schoolwork" and "exams" as the major sources of worry and stress in their lives. 60% of students report being too stressed to complete their work on at least one occasion. Test anxiety appears to be our most prevalent academic handicap.

Benign Neglect Perhaps one percent of highly anxious students ever receive adequate treatment. Why? Too Few Volunteer.. Too Few Counselors. Test anxiety treatment can take 4+ hours, Boring. The protocols are repetitious and are boring for counselors.

Suggestions (i) If unprepared, you are well advised to prepare earlier and more completely. Simply reading good advise seems to have little impact, as students do not follow through.

Advantages The confidence training anxiety reduction is similar to systematic desensitization, but with several advantages. It has 3 main components

Stand Down (component I) Simple relaxation is fragile, easily undone. Replace with A “stand down” sequence, to regroup. (or acronym STARS = Stretch-Tense-Air- Release&relax-Suggestions ) Tensed muscles fatigue quickly, and relaxation follows naturally. The active physical involvement is markedly faster, stronger, and more reliable than the simple relaxation . [Participants: **Experience stand down sequence– tense–air–release~relax–suggestions sequence.]

Interest & Challenge (component II) In place of relaxation images… Students imagine an activity which they find interesting or challenging. The sense of mastery provides a much more adaptive outlook than does simple relaxation. [Participants: ** Imagine an interesting or challenging activity, and remember the feelings.]

Conditioning (component III) Students next review eight learning, review, and testing scenes… with instructions to find the activities interesting…. each followed by a step down sequence. In the special sequencing here, students do imagine enjoying learning, organizing, and then showing their mastery on a test. [Participants: ** Imagine a stressful situation in your own life, see yourself doing well at it, remember the experience, and rate the outcome.]

On Size Fits All The sequences counter even strong surges of anxiety and cannot be overwhelmed or inhibited by anxiety. Therefore, the same recorded protocol can be administered across students with high, medium, or low anxiety to the testing scenes.** Note: All research presented here was conducted with recorded administration.

Anxiety Reduction Findings The best cognitive and desensitization protocols yield a 1.0–1.2 SD benefit. The anxiety control training produced an average 1.8 SD benefit in our first 5 studies Note: Links to research are at: TestAnxietyControl.com/research

Test Gains The anxiety control training has registered test gains in each of 7 studies. ¾ of a letter grade test gains (18 percentile) were attained by anxious 12 freshmen, half on academic probation, compared to placebo controls. Improvement was considerably stronger for the academic probation students, than for the regular students ½ of a letter grade test gains (12 percentile points) were attained in three additional studies.

Test Gains The anxiety control training has registered test gains in each of 7 studies. ¾ of a letter grade test gains (18 percentile) were attained by anxious 12 freshmen, half on academic probation, compared to placebo controls. Improvement was considerably stronger for the academic probation students, than for the regular students ½ of a letter grade test gains (12 percentile points) were attained in three additional studies.

Conclusions The training appears to produce ½ letter grade benefit among struggling college students, and about half that much among younger students.

Does Good Advice Help? In each of these studies, the control group was asked to read several pages of test anxiety advice from a highly regarded University website. The significantly higher scores in the treated groups suggests that the good advice had little impact, and that anxious students need something more.

Your School Program Q: What can you do with the Confidence Training program that you cannot do with something else? A: Treat your ridiculously high numbers of highly test anxious students without sinking your school resources. The Confidence Training appears stronger, faster, cheaper, and easier to manage than leading alternatives.

Try It Out (step 1) Familiarize yourself with the program. Identify a few test anxious students. Have each of the students review the Training. Talk to the students about their experience. Are you ready for a larger program?

Screen Students You might screen students at: Remember that few students volunteer, You might screen students at: your counseling center psychology and health classes freshmen orientation remedial assistance programs Use the Westside test anxiety scale, which is brief, valid, and free. The scale assesses worry, and performance impairment, but not physiological factors, which are not found tooo improve the scale. www.testanxietycontrol.com/download/scale.html

Click below to download scale Or doubleClick on icon below, yes to continue, yes to open

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A Golden Opportunity Confidence Training offers a rare opportunity to benefit some of our most tortured students, and to retain students who would otherwise wash out. Oct 2011