Brief Treatment of Test Anxiety with Cognitive Modification.

Cognitive modification has become a popular treatment for test anxiety. Unlike other treatments, it has led to improvements in academic performance as well as to decreases in test anxiety. The present study evaluated a brief cognitive modification treatment of test anxiety which was approximately one-half as long as previous effective treatments. This four session treatment led to significant decreases in test anxiety relative to a relaxation control group and a no treatment control group but not to improvement on the WAIS Digit Symbol subtest. Neither was there any improvement in treatment groups in GPA after treatment or one year later. There was improvement in GPA in the no treatment control group. Author