Evaluation of Exam Anxiety in Healthy Subjects using Brain Signals Analysis

Recent studies have proven that anxiety disorders have the highest abundance throughout the world. Almost everyone has experienced an anxiety. This anxiety can have an agonizing impact on a person’s life; however, anxiety can also be invigorating. Invigorating anxiety pushes a person to work with a goal in mind, while the more detrimental type of anxiety limits his or her attention. The purpose of this study was to investigate the brain function in test anxiety during answering mathematical questions.

In this experiment, 22 participants (9 male and 13 female) divided in two groups of test and control. Speelberger and ASRS anxiety tests were taken from all of the participants. Then electroencephalogram signal was recorded on 19 channels for 5 minutes with their eyes open and they were taking a conceptual math test simultaneously. In comparison with the control group, the test group had a shorter time to answer the questions and the video of the test group subjects was recorded while answering to a serious tester. After signal preprocessing, using Neuroguide software, frequency band powers of brain signal was extracted and the inattentional index (Theta/Beta ratio) was compared between the test and control groups using paired sample t-test.

In the test group, a significant decrease in theta to beta index was observed during math test compared to the eyes open condition on T3 (p=0.077, t=1.96), T4 (p=0.026, t=2.619)), T5 (p=0.084, t=1.91) channels. Besides, a nearly significant correlation (r=0.4055, p=0.0612) was found between false answers and percent change of theta/beta index during math test compared to rest condition.

Anxiety in the test group was invigorating and reduced test error and inattention index. In the healthy subjects, due to the imposing anxiety from tester, the level of attention of the subjects increased significantly and their error in answering the questions decreased.