Choking And Its Alleviation Under The Pressure Of Modular Operation With Different Working Memory Capacity

Choking under pressure refers to individual's declining performance under pressure, such as failure in exams. Modular arithmetic is a mathematical problem-solving task, and also a cognitive task. To handle it successfully, individual's processing and storage capabilities of working memory are required. This study is designed to explore by modular arithmetic, whether participants with high and low working memory will encounter choking under pressure or not; if positive, try to minimize the impact in two different ways — cognitive reappraisal and inducing positive emotions.The pressure situation in this study was set as time pressure. In order to determine the time that generates pressure, pre-experiment 1 determined the time (5000ms) firstly;then pre-experiment 2 tested the effectiveness of the time. As a result, level of anxiety,perceived time pressure, the evaluation of time sufficiency and the average response time all demonstrated that 5000ms was effective and reasonable. It's not only efficient to generate pressure but also capable of guaranteeing enough time to answer questions.Experiment 1 used 2 (working memory capacity: high, low)×2 (pressure situation:yes, no) mixed design with 115 effective subjects, taking working memory capacity as a between-subject factor, whether it's under pressure as a within-subject factor, and the modular arithmetic scores as the dependent variable. Pressure time(5000ms) and correct answer rate (above 90%) comprised pressure situations. At the beginning of the experiment, participants firstly accomplished computation span task for the test of their working memory capacities. Then participants completed modular arithmetic tasks in non-pressure situation. Finally, they completed the same modular arithmetic tasks in pressure situations. Results showed that participants with both high and low working memory capacities scored significantly higher in non-pressure situations than in pressure situation.Experiment 2 used 2 (working memory capacity: high, low) × 2 (intervention ways:induce positive emotion, cognitive evaluation) × 2 (test: before intervention, after intervention) mixed design with 117 effective participants, taking working memory capacity and intervention approach as between-subject factors, whether test before or after intervention as within-subject factor, and the modular arithmetic scores as the dependent variable. Pressure situations were set the same as experiment 1. At the beginning of the experiment, participants firstly accomplished computation span task for the test of their working memory capacities. Secondly, participants completed modular arithmetic tasks without intervention and filled in the anxiety-tested questionnaire. Then they received two kinds of intervention approach respectively.Finally, participants completed modular arithmetic task and filled in the anxiety-tested questionnaire again. Results showed that: (1) participants with both high and low working memory capacities scored significantly lower after intervention than before intervention through the anxiety-tested questionnaire which showed both anxiety and emotions. (2) the modular arithmetic scores of participants with low working memory capacity was significantly increased with two kinds of intervention approaches -inducing positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal. (3) the modular arithmetic scores of participants with high working memory capacity was significantly increased with the intervention approach of inducing positive emotions while with the intervention approach of cognitive reappraisal the scores scarcely increased.All of the results above drew the following conclusions: (1) by modular arithmetic,participants with both high and low working memory capacities encountered choking under pressure. (2) for participants with low working memory capacity, inducing positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal can effectively alleviate choking under pressure. (3) for participants with high working memory capacity, inducing positive emotions can effectively alleviate the choking under pressure while cognitive reappraisal cannot. This study will further discuss and summarize the above results of this study, try to figure how to put that into practice, promoting practical application and innovation, and prospect the related research in the foreseeable future.