Talented people often choke under pressure
because the distraction caused by stress consumes their
working memory, a psychologist at the University of
Chicago has found.
Highly accomplished people tend to heavily rely on their
abundant supply of working memory and are therefore disadvantaged
when challenged to solve difficult problems, such as mathematical
ones, under pressure, according to research by Sian Beilock,
Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of
Chicago. Her findings were presented Saturday, Feb. 17
at the annual meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science.
People with less adequate supplies of working memory
learn other ways of problem solving to compensate for
their deficiencies and although these alternative problem
solving strategies are not highly accurate, they are
not impacted additionally by working under pressure,
the research found.
Beilock found that when put under pressure, the talented
people with larger amounts of working memory began using
short-cuts to solve problems, such as guessing and estimation,
strategies similar to those used by individuals with
less adequate working memories. As a result of taking
those shortcuts, the accuracy of the talented people
was undermined.
"These findings suggest that performance pressure
harms higher working memory individuals by consuming
the cognitive resources that they rely on for their
superior performance -- and as a result, higher working
memory individuals respond by switching to the less
accurate problem solving strategies normally used by
lower working memory students," Beilock said.
The results have implications for the evaluation of
performance on high stakes tests, such as those needed
to advance in school and college entrance examinations,
she said.
Working memory is a short-term memory system that maintains
a limited amount of information in an active state.
It functions by providing information of immediate relevance
while preventing distractions and irrelevant thoughts
from interfering with the task at hand.
People with a high level of working memory depend on
it heavily during problem solving. "If you've got
it, flaunt it" Beilock said.
However, that same advantage makes them particularly
susceptible to the dangers of stress.
"In essence, feelings of pressure introduce an
intrusion that eats up available working memory for
talented people," Beilock said.
In order to study the impact of stress on working memory,
Beilock and her colleagues tested roughly 100 college
undergraduates. They gave them tests to determine the
strength of their working memory and then subjected
them to a series of complicated, unfamiliar mathematics
problems.
Students were given pressure by being told they would
be paid for their correct answers, but that they would
only receive the money if a partner, chosen randomly
who they did not know, would also win. Then they were
told that their partner had solved the problem correctly,
thus increasing the pressure.
The study showed that as a result of the pressure,
the performance of students with strong working memory
declined to the same level as those with more limited
working memory. Those with more limited working memory
performed as well under added pressure as they did without
the stress.
