Erika Luo- Week 4-Testing Memory
I’m sure that many of you have experienced amnesia whenever you take a stressful exam. I have this happen to me way too many times whenever I’m being assessed for something really important. I just finished taking the AP English Language and Composition exam, which is probably why I feel so inclined to write about this topic. During the free response section of the test, I legitimately like black out for 30 minutes and come back into consciousness to see what I have just written. And like an hour later, I honestly do not remember what I have written. I feel like this sort of amnesia happens whenever I finish an average test; the second that I walk out of the classroom, I lose the ability to retain the information that I spent so long trying to memorize. Even when I was auditioning for the school play/musical, this phenomenon happened to me. While reciting monologues or singing a certain song, I often forget what I’m doing exactly and resort to relying on instinct. During these moments, I wonder how stress affects your memory. I feel like when you’re stressed, you often forget how to do basic tasks during and after a stressful test; after an English test, I feel like I completely lose the ability to form coherent sentences. In psychology, I learned about the concept of selective attention. Selective attention is the capacity for or process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively when several occur simultaneously. If I were to correlate this concept to my experience with test memory, I would say that my capacity for coding multiple stimuli at once into my brain is fairly low. What is your experience with test memory?
Comments
Yeah I do get that sometimes too, but it is mostly coming out of a testing environment and literally forgetting everyone single thing that I was just tested on. It almost seems as if my body had been shut down and resetted. Usually after a hard lesson or so, I generally need a lot of time to recover. Taking or having a break usually helps, but sometimes it is the fact that I am unfortunately unaware of other stuff that is currently happening, thus less productive in the following class.
Testing environments typically get me at an optimal arousal level (AP Psychology reference lol) so my memory somehow gets boosted … It’s a weird phenomenon, but a helpful one. But I do totally agree that after I have taken a stress-inducing test, I tend to forget everything that had just happened. The phrase, “slipping in and out of consciousness” during the test is extremely accurate. I remember for the argument essay portion of the AP English Lang exam, I completely blanked out while trying to think of what to write for like 15 minutes … A little embarrassing, but at least it’s over now!
-Angel Susantin
I think your type of amnesia is very common, however, mine is kinda different. I usually like to forget about stressful things after they happen, just to heal my heart. It also prevents me from worrying about it, like worrying if my answers were right, because I forgot the answers I put already. That's why if you ask me now what I put on any of my AP tests, I probably could not tell you. I feel like this amnesia is a recent development. I think I choose to forget about these things after last semester which was way too stressful. I think it may be, on a smaller scale, similar to when people forget traumatizing things that happen to them.
I understand what you are saying because as soon as someone asks me how the biology test went and what the questions were about, I forget. The worst part is that people think that I am stalling to tell them and I do not want to. I hate this part of my brain because it's just so annoying, but I guess that is just how my brain works and I have to be thankful this doesn't usually happen during the test.
Sincerely,
Mrinmayee
I love the image you chose, it truly represents how I feel recently thanks to the stress of finals, projects, and tests. I also have really bad test memory, where I forget things I spent hours memorizing out of nowhere because I’m either too nervous or stressed to concentrate. It’s really hard to focus on one stimulus (the test) when your thoughts take over and make you feel stressed. I hope that you will have really good selective attention during all your finals!
Sincerely,
Faith Tong
This is a very #relatable moment (so real of you)! I feel like I always forget major components of the test sometimes and then question myself because I just cannot bring myself to remember the forgotten. I will spend countless of hours on a subject, only for my memory to fail me. Even better, I usually forget the questions after the test too anyways, so it is almost as if all of my memory of the subject AND the test is gone...