Smart People Choke Under Pressure

10 Feb, 2005 at 1:11am ET Article published in Tech

A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.

“The pressure causes verbal worries, like ‘Oh no, I can’t screw up,’” said Sian Beilock, assistant professor of psychology at Miami University of Ohio. “These thoughts reside in the working memory.” And that takes up space that would otherwise be pondering the task at hand.

“When they begin to worry, then they’re in trouble,” Beilock told LiveScience. “People with lower working-memory capacities are not using that capacity to begin with, so they’re not affected by pressure.”

The findings are detailed this week’s issue of Psychological Science.

Working memory, also known as short-term memory, holds information that is relevant to performance and ensures task focus. It’s what allows us to remember and retrieve information from an early step of a long task, such as long-division math.

Source: Live Science

Comments

10 Feb 2005 ~ 1:25am mmonnin Takes up space? They make it sounds like memory in a computer and that if we try to use more than what we have there is serious performance issues.
10 Feb 2005 ~ 8:58am entropy Heh. It might be true. Tests don't bother me at all, and I usually score pretty well. Thing is, I just can't remember anything specific from the test 10 minutes later... my short-term memory is terrible.

Now what was I talking about?
10 Feb 2005 ~ 10:35am mmonnin Thats just means you dont have any memory leaks and your brain de-allocates the memory it used.;)
10 Feb 2005 ~ 12:41pm Spinner

mmonnin wrote:

Thats just means you dont have any memory leaks and your brain de-allocates the memory it used.;)

I think my brain definately runs on generic cheapo memory. If I try and clock my brain too high it almost always crashes, it's such a shame as well, as my brains always had a top of the line CPU. :sad2:
10 Feb 2005 ~ 1:39pm RWB my brian overheated long time ago, hasnot been same since.
10 Feb 2005 ~ 5:23pm Ghaleon4 My brain is water-cooled.
14 Feb 2005 ~ 7:01am D.M.Turner Put down that salvia pipe!!
15 Feb 2005 ~ 9:06pm Garg So if I was forgetful, would Prime tell me to run Memtest86?
15 Feb 2005 ~ 9:21pm Geeky1 Yes.