A randomized controlled trial of acceptance-based behavior therapy and cognitive therapy for test anxiety: a pilot study.
A single two-hour acceptance workshop lifted exam scores in test-anxious students, while traditional cognitive therapy did not.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers ran a small randomized trial with university students who freeze up on exams. Half got a two-hour acceptance-based behavior therapy group. The other half got a two-hour cognitive therapy group.
Both workshops taught one-time skills right before finals. The team then compared final exam scores and self-rated anxiety.
What they found
The acceptance group earned higher exam scores than the cognitive group. The difference was clear enough to matter.
Students also reported slightly lower test anxiety, but that change was not strong enough to call significant.
How this fits with other research
Danitz et al. (2014) ran almost the same 90-minute acceptance workshop. They cut depression in first-year students. Together the studies show a super-short acceptance class can help different college problems.
Paliliunas et al. (2018) stretched the idea into a six-week ACT values course for graduate students. Grades still went up, proving the payoff can last longer than one afternoon.
Morrison et al. (2017) moved the work online. A free web ACT program helped anxiety, depression, and academic concerns. So live groups are not required.
Why it matters
You can steal the two-hour script and run it before mid-terms at your university clinic. No long wait-list, no multi-week commitment. Students walk out with a skill set that may show up in their next test score.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Many university students suffer from test anxiety that is severe enough to impair performance. Given mixed efficacy results of previous cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) trials and a theoretically driven rationale, an acceptance-based behavior therapy (ABBT) approach was compared to traditional CBT (i.e., Beckian cognitive therapy; CT) for the treatment of test anxiety. In this pilot study, 16 university students with test anxiety were randomly assigned to receive either a CT or ABBT 2-hr group workshop. The two treatments produced markedly different effects on test performance (measured by exam scores), with those receiving ABBT experiencing improvements in performance, whereas those receiving CT exhibited reduced performance. In addition, there was a suggestion that ABBT might have been more effective at reducing subjectively experienced test anxiety (i.e., a nonsignificant but medium-sized group by time interaction effect). Implications of these results for the treatment of test anxiety and for theoretical notions related to cognitive change strategies are discussed.
Behavior modification, 2011 · doi:10.1177/0145445510390930