Exam anxiety relief found - research

By Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle, From: AP, January 14, 2011 7:38AM

A SIMPLE writing exercise can relieve students of exam anxiety and may help them get better scores than their less anxious classmates, a new study has found. The report to be published in today's edition of the journal Science says students who spend 10 minutes before an exam writing about their thoughts and feelings can free up brainpower previously occupied by testing worries and do their best work. "We essentially got rid of this relationship between test anxiety and performance," said Sian L Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study with graduate student Gerardo Ramirez.

Psychologists, educators and parents have known for a long time that the way students perform on a test does not necessarily indicate what knowledge they bring to the table. Test anxiety is fairly common in classrooms, especially in the US because of its "increasingly test-obsessed culture," Professor Beilock said. Test anxiety can lead to poorer grades and lower scores on standardised tests and college entrance exams, which can condemn talented students to inferior colleges. The University of Chicago researchers found that students who were prone to test anxiety improved their test grades by nearly one grade point - from a B-minus to a B-plus, for example - if they were given 10 minutes before an exam to write about their feelings. The researchers tested their hypothesis with college students in a lab setting and with high school students in the classroom, by first gauging the level of test anxiety and then offering the writing intervention to some students.

The researchers believe worrying competes for computing power in the brain's "working", or short-term, memory. If working memory is focused on worrying, it can't help a person recall all the information his brain stored in preparation for the test. It also affects the working memory's ability to stay focused. Professor Beilock said the idea for the writing exercise came from the use of writing to combat depression. Expressive writing, in which people write repeatedly about a traumatic or emotional experience over several weeks or months, has been shown to decrease worrying in people who are depressed. Professor Beilock believes this research is applicable to all kinds of performance anxiety - from giving a speech to interviewing for a job. "There's a lot we can do to change how we think about the pressures and thus how we perform," she said.

The next stage of the research project, which is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, will involve a look inside the anxious brain to see how it changes during stressful situations, Professor Beilock said. She also hopes to develop more interventions to help people perform better during stress. Her lab is looking at how awareness of stereotypes affect the way people perform, such as women and math phobias.

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For the journalistically challenged

Internet porn block 'not possible' say ISPs

Government plans to block pornography "at source" are unlikely to prove effective, say ISPs. The proposal to cut off access to pornographic material was floated by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey in an interview with the Sunday Times. The government is talking to ISPs to set up a meeting at which the proposal will be discussed. But, say experts, technical challenges mean any large scale filtering system is doomed to failure.

Legal issues

A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, confirmed Mr Vaizey's plan to talk to ISPs about setting up an age verification scheme to govern access to pornographic sites. "This is a very serious matter," said Mr Vaizey. "I think it's very important that it's the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children." "I'm hoping they will get their acts together so we don't have to legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years."

In response to the government proposal, Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Ispa industry body, said: "Ispa firmly believes that controls on children's access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down." Mr Lansman said its members provided parents with many different means of controlling what is accessible via the computers in their homes. "Online safety is a priority issue for the internet industry and ISPA will be discussing the options available to protect children with Government," he said. "ISPs currently block child abuse content which is illegal and widely regarded as abhorrent," said Mr Lansman. "Blocking lawful pornography content is less clear cut, will lead to the blocking of access to legitimate content and is only effective in preventing inadvertent access." BT, the UK's largest ISP, said it would be "happy" to take part in any discussion of the issues, but added: "There are many legal, consumer rights and technical issues that would need to be considered before any new web blocking policy was developed."

Filter failure

"Unfortunately, It's technically not possible to completely block this stuff," said Trefor Davies, chief technology officer at ISP Timico. “If we take this step it will not take very long to end up with an internet that's a walled garden of sites the governments is happy for you to see” He said the sheer volume of pornographic material online and the number of ways that people access it, via the web, file-sharing networks, news groups, discussion boards and the like, made the job impossible. While some proponents of a national pornographic filtering scheme cite the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) as an example of how such a scheme might work, Mr Davies said it was not a good guide. The IWF circulates a list to ISPs of sites found to be hosting illegal images of child sexual abuse.

However, said Mr Davies, the IWF draws up its list largely using information passed to it by the public. In addition it only tackles illegal content found on websites. Such a system would not work if it was used to deal with millions of porn sites, chat rooms and bulletin boards, he said. Experience with filtering systems, he said, shows that they are a very blunt tool that often blocks access to sites that could be useful. "You end up with a system that's either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it's just not effective," he said. "The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to my mind," he said.

“What we are talking about is censorship to protect our children”

Mr Davies also feared that any wide-scale attempt to police pornographic content would soon be expanded to include pirated pop songs, films and TV shows. "If we take this step it will not take very long to end up with an internet that's a walled garden of sites the governments is happy for you to see," he said. His comment was echoed by Jim Killock, chair of the Open Rights Group which campaigns on digital liberties issues. "This is not about pornography, it is about generalised censorship through the back door," said Mr Killock. "This is the wrong way to go," he said. "If the government controlled a web blacklist, you can bet that Wikileaks would be on it."

Miranda Suit, co-chair of Safer Media, which campaigns to make media safe for children, told the BBC that the pornography available on the internet was "qualitatively and quantitatively" different from any that has gone before. Ms Suit cited a report compiled by the US conservative think tank The Witherspoon Institute which suggested that easy access to pornography was damaging some young people. "Children are becoming addicted in their teens to internet pornography," she said. "They are being mentally damaged so they cannot engage in intimate relationships." Safer Media backed the government call to block pornography "at source", said Ms Suit. "What we are talking about is censorship to protect our children," she said.

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Review of media classifications ordered

From: AAP, December 21, 2010 11:59AM

THE Federal Government has ordered a wide-ranging review of media classification as a row over access to violent video games continues. Attorney-General Robert McClelland, announcing the review today, said advances in technology meant the whole system of classification needed to be considered. The draft terms of reference for the year-long Australian Law Reform Commission review suggest the classification categories themselves may be changed.

The review is set to look at a host of issues including the impact of classifications on the community and the Government's desire for a strong content and distribution industry. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said when the classification scheme began, content and the way it was delivered to consumers was relatively static. "Today, films can be watched in a cinema, on DVD, on TV or downloaded," he said. "Many video games include significant film segments to tell stories, and some films have interactive content."

Comments on the terms of reference will be taken until January 28, 2011 with a full report from the commission due on December 9. The review has been announced in the midst of a continuing debate about legalising the sale of violent video games previously unavailable in retail outlets. Earlier in December, Mr McClelland decided to draw up guidelines for the possible creation of an R18+ classification. The decision angered many family and Christian groups.

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