title: Mindfulness, anxiety, and high-stakes mathematics performance in the laboratory and classroom.
abstract: Mindfulness enhances emotion regulation and cognitive performance. A mindful approach may be especially beneficial in high-stakes academic testing environments, in which anxious thoughts disrupt cognitive control. The current studies examined whether mindfulness improves the emotional response to anxiety-producing testing situations, freeing working memory resources, and improving performance. In Study 1, we examined performance in a high-pressure laboratory setting. Mindfulness indirectly benefited math performance by reducing the experience of state anxiety. This benefit occurred selectively for problems that required greater working memory resources. Study 2 extended these findings to a calculus course taken by undergraduate engineering majors. Mindfulness indirectly benefited students' performance on high-stakes quizzes and exams by reducing their cognitive test anxiety. Mindfulness did not impact performance on lower-stakes homework assignments. These findings reveal an important mechanism by which mindfulness benefits academic performance, and suggest that mindfulness may help attenuate the negative effects of test anxiety.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, United States.
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Bellinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, United States. Electronic address: marci.decaro@louisville.edu.
authors.forename: Marci S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: DeCaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering Fundamentals, University of Louisville, United States.
authors.forename: Patricia A S
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Ralston
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D064866:Mindfulness; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Education; Engineering; Mathematics; Mindfulness; Pressure; Test anxiety; Working memory