Tame Test Anxiety: Proven Anxiety Reduction Training CD

Tame Test Anxiety is a CD training experience that produces substantial anxiety reduction and half of a letter grade test gains for college and high school students. The CD training has produced consistent anxiety reduction in six consecutive research studies, and has been shown to improve test scores in four consecutive studies. The treatment is a modern counterconditioning accelerated by stronger components. Vigorous stretch, tense, deep breath, release relax, and suggestion (STARS) sequences replace simple relaxation suggestions seen in other methods, to curtail anxiety. Imagined interest and a sense of achievement replace the passively pleasant images found in most methods. The STARS sequences are used to produce a comfortable state in which students are more focused and more receptive to adaptive suggestions. Students imagine an especially interesting activity, and then, by suggestion, imagine being interested in a series of eight learning, review, and testing scenes. Additional STARS sequences are included between scenes, to curb anxiety and to reinstate the calmness and to prepare for the next scenes. The vivid experience of release and safety at the conclusion of each testing scene conditions participants to perceive the situation as safe and no longer frightening. The intervention is thus a combination of active physical participation to control anxiety and adaptive attitudes to improve your outlook. The procedure reframes the threatening situation as an interesting one, as in cognitive therapies, and then follows through with two additional steps: You experience yourself being interested, and the sequence finishes with a sense of well-being and relaxation. Ordinarily, it would be far-fetched to propose that highly test anxious students could take pleasure in anything remotely connected to a test. And yet, in the special sequencing here, students can and do imagine enjoying learning, organizing, and then showing their mastery on a test. And after students imagine being interested in the scenes, it is a short step to feeling that interest in the actual situations. The training has been found to consistently improve test scores. Twelve highly anxious college freshman attained an average three-quarters of a letter grade gain in our 2004 research at a small private college, compared to students who reviewed four pages of advice on how to reduce test anxiety. Twenty-two anxious nursing students in a state University program recently attained an average 60+ gain on the standardized HESI test, which is a substantial 12+ percentile gain, compared to students who reviewed test-anxiety reduction suggestions. More modest gains have been attained with younger students. Good advice benefits the sometimes anxious, but is easily lost amid the high stress experienced by truly anxious students. The Tame Test Anxiety training conditions students to automatically concentrate on your test material and not on your worries and your anxiety. So far as we have seen, this is surely one of the strongest, fastest, cheapest and most reliable anxiety-reduction training protocols available anywhere. We recommend students listen to the training CD twice, and then again as you feel warranted. Benefits are expected to continue over several years, with only occasional reviews. The Training CD imprints and conditions a more confident outlook, and you do not need to review the CD prior to each test.Read More