What is the psychology involved when preparing for and doing exams?
8th April 2019
By Nathan Harper
It’s been claimed that learning how the brain works psychologically before & in exams can potentially lead to better performances in exams, so I’m going to have a look at how this can be the case:
1.It’s okay to be stressed, but make sure your level of stress is manageable
Being stressed about exams is a good thing. It is considered that being too relaxed can be a prelude to complacency, so having a little stress is advised. But managing your levels of stress is crucial. Make sure you don’t get too stressed so much so that you ‘freak out’. It’s all about finding the middle-ground. Studies say an increase in the average stress level of a person will actually, to a point increase your performance levels. But at the opposite end of the scale, if you go into an exam too relaxed and have your mind not fully focused on the tasks ahead, your marks will be negatively impacted and you will not do as well as anticipated by you or/and others. The key to completing or/and succeeding in an exam is balancing out parts of these two extremes.
2.Is cramming beneficiary or a potential pitfall?
When revising for an exam, only highlight what you need to know: the crucial bits of info you will rely on to do the exam successfully. Cramming in everything that needs to be revised into a hours-long session the night before isn’t the best use of your brain processing, but why? Well, crammers tend to read through revision papers and only note/write down the things to crucially remember, but without any explanations as to why or how to put them to use correctly. Learning all the answers to a long exam is unwise as it would be very difficult to hold all the info in your brain. We humans are built to make sense of things. Spreading out your frequency of learning over a longer period will benefit you along with ensuring that you understand what you’re studying. But we don’t have much capability for learning things that are ‘out of context’. If you are doing integrated learning, you are thinking about info and you’ll be working out how to go on and apply it to different things. This will give you clues in the aim of you recalling pieces of info.
3.Where and what environment is ideal to study in?
Experts say the most ideal environment to study for exams is, as close to the environment where the exam is taking place, as possible. We all have a favourite place to study but we may not realise the effect/level of effect it will have when it comes to the real thing and the results. A desk is the most obvious and most recommended place to revise. The least recommended is on a bed or in a large kitchen table. This method is called associative learning. The more similar environment we revise in to the place where we learnt it all in the first place is the most beneficial setting to revise. When we are learning new things, the brain stores the learned info at the time along with the details of the environment where we learned the stuff in. Therefore, if you were to duplicate that environment as much as possible into your study time, it will be more familiar when exam day comes and you can use the basis clues you’ve picked up to help with recall. You should not study with music on, because it’ll not match the environment you will be in when you do the exam.
4.Do one thing at a time
We live in an age where we are all connected e.g. online, mobile. But the mobile phone can prove to be a big distraction in exams. It needs to be kept out of your sight at all times during the exam, if this is done and you focus on the task at hand at all times, the more you’ll get out of your studying especially if it’s a recall or/and recognition task. Our brains aren’t built to complexly multitask and you have to use your mental energy when going backwards and forwards between tasks, this means you’re not doing either task justice and it would make things harder for yourself as you’re dividing your attention. This may include picking up your phone during studying. This may harm performance and consequently your results. It may be best to leave your phone out of your sight.
5.Sleep
You may be tempted to stay up late at night for what you see as essential, last minute revision. This could actually harm your results when you do the real thing. You need a minimum of 6 hours sleep otherwise you may suffer from cognitive deficit {you may not be aware of it}. You may feel ok after a drink, but your ability to analyse will be severely affected. Sleep is so important. There are several things that happen psychologically during sleep in the aim of storing memories for recall. For most, it is more important to get a full and decent night’s kip then to undertake late-night last-minute revision and then to go into the exam with only a few hours’ sleep.