App to Help Reduce Exam Stress

A fear that every student faces is that of not doing well in an important exam. Exam stress is a very real issue and is being addressed by experts from different fields. They advice watching what you eat, staying hydrated, getting exercise and sleeping well, to give your best performance. Now the researchers at Cornell University have taken it up a notch by creating an app.

The app called BoostMeUp is used with a smartwatch. The wearable tech gadget produces a slow, light tapping on the inner wrist of the wearer. Created by Jean Costa and his team, the app was tested on 72 college students who had to give two high pressure math exams. The team monitored the base heart lines of the students during the exams.

About half the participants received tapping at 30% higher than the base heart lines and the other half received tapping at 30% lower than the base heart lines rate. It was found that the faster tapping group reported more anxiety levels, while the slower tapping group felt less stress.

Also the test results of the 36 questions on the math exam showed this difference. Those with the higher tapping rate answered 0.58 more questions incorrectly. While the slow tapping group answered 1.75 more questions correctly. Interesting science project involving cognition and stress.