A Review of the Literature A wide body of literature exists examining stress and its relationship to academic performance, learning,

and dealing with challenges. The overwhelming majority of studies show that high levels of stress have a detrimental effect upon performance, learning, and higher-level thinking. However, different authors examine different contributing factors--and study different facets-of the issue. Some parse stresss effects into pieces and focus on particular ones. For example, Bar-Tal, Shrira and Keinan acknowledge the value and sense of Capacity Resource Theory, yet they seek to put forward a new cognitive motivational model to account for the relationships between stress and cognitive structuring (2012). Capacity Resource Theory...posits that stressor identification and appraisal, emotional and physiological stress reactions, and coping efforts all have cognitive representations that take up cognitive capacity (Mandler, 1993). Given that attentional resources are limited (Eysenck, 1982), their consumption by stress leaves less attention for task performance (Bar-Tal, Shrira & Keinan). These particular authors give special attention to stresss relationship to cognitive structuring which is often associated with top down holistic and rapid processing, with crudely differentiated categories and stereotypical thinking, premature black-and- white-type solutions, and over-simplified dichotomizations (Bar-Tal, Shrira & Keinan, 2012). They look at stress not just being tied to undesirable developmental and educational outcomes, but tied to a certain kind of lower-level thinking. This study works with a higher level of specificity than the one at hand, but Bar-Tal, Shrira, and Keinan--and most other authors working on the topic--do touch upon coping (maladaptive and efficacious), emotional stimulation, and living conditions. These components of the issue are important and relevant to the present study.

The sundry literature examined here covers children from infancy to college; some of it includes parents. Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, and Bradley look at the home-situation of pre-schoolers and early elementary students and examine certain conditions effect upon their affect and performance. When evaluating living conditions, they use a measuring device called the HOME scale: In a large number of early childhood interventions, the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory has been used to investigate...effects, because it provides reasonably broad coverage of the social and physical conditions presumed to influence both cognitive and socio-emotional development (Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, & Bradley, 2005). Using this scale, researchers--ostensibly--can assess the home environments ambient stress level. Wealth or a lack of resources, of course, are factors in that environment (a topic highly relevant to the present study). Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, and Bradley found that [a]lthough support and improved child development correlated with decreased stress...this was not true for parents with low socioeconomic status. In that group, stress was significantly related only to income, not to support or changes in the child's developmental progress. This implies that the stress induced by low income was so powerful that it superseded the potential effects of a supportive program (2005). Confidence and self-efficacy have been examined as they relate to the ways students cope with academic stress. Bar-Tal, Shrira and Keinan found that [t]he lower a persons confidence that coping efforts can reduce distress (i.e., the lower their sense of control), the less they will try to cope (2012). It has been found that students with higher levels of stress tend to manage problems in poorer ways: Students who appraise an academic stressor as highly threatening...cope with maladaptive coping strategies with resulting detrimental outcomes (Ben-Zur & Zeidner, 2012). [T]here are well-established strong associations amongst...negative emotions, maladap-

tive (especially emotion-focussed) coping, anxiety, and psychological distress (Matthews et al., 2009 as paraphrased in Saklofske, Austin, Mastoras, Beaton, & Osborne). This cycle of maladaptive coping mechanisms (e.g. avoidance) leading to further stress and a negative outlook will be examined in the the discussion section of this study. More than a few authors explore the way that stress impacts and changes the brain and the body. Researchers at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans presented studies showing how stress caused by everything from battlefield trauma to bullying can alter brain circuitry in ways that have long-term effects on mental health. Another way stress affects mental health is by releasing chemicals that impair the function of the prefrontal cortex, which is where higher level thought takes place, says Amy Arnsten, a neurobiologist at Yale. When that happens, she says, We switch from being thoughtful creatures to being reactive creatures (Hamilton, 2012). Dr. Arnstens summary corroborates statements found elsewhere in the literature (e.g. Harris, quoted in Glass, 2012 and in Tough, 2012). Chronic stress has been associated with an array of physiological problems, not only mental and emotional ones. [With] enough difficult childhood experiences, [y]ou were two and a half times as likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adulthood, twice as likely to have heart disease, two and a half times as likely to have hepatitis, four and a half times as likely to be depressed, 12 times as likely to attempt suicide (Harris, 2012). This is completely congruent with a statement from Saklofske, Austin, Mastoras, Beaton, and Osborne: Other studies of negative emotional/dispositional factors in students have found a wide range of associations relating to health, academic adjustment and well-being (Saklofske et al., 2012). What Can Be Done?

Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, and Bradley look at parent education programs. They find that the effectiveness of such programs is not consistent across the board: Interventions with middle-class, non-adolescent parents showed higher effect sizes than interventions with low SES or adolescent samples (2005). Other authors look at fostering positive emotions as a way to combat the effects of stress: For academic success, in line with the approach which has been advocated in the context of health (e.g. Pettit, Kline, Gencoz, Gencoz, & Joiner, 2001), interventions aimed at enhancing levels of positive emotions could allow students greater access to psychological resources which would enhance effective study (Saklofske et al., 2012). It is possible that just encouraging young people to be cognizant of their own emotional state, and letting them know that their learning and performance are correlated with it, has some beneficial effect: And so with that in mind, programs and experiments have sprung up to try to change kids' lives by teaching...noncognitive skills. Paul Tough documents a bunch of these in his book. What's striking, Tough says, is how simple some of the interventions are. Many of them basically come down to having a coach for kids to teach them resilience and optimism...certain situations...There are some studies where they've taken kids and given them...a college mentor. And this college mentor would work with these kids not very intensively, like meeting with them a couple of times a year. And the only thing that they would say to them, the only message that they would give to them, is simply this idea that, "You know, scientists have studied intelligence. And they've found that you can improve your intelligence. So you should just think about that as you're going through your day" (Glass, 2012).

References Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., van Uzendoorn, M., Bradley, R. (2005). Those who have, receive: The matthew effect in early childhood intervention in the home environment. Review of Educational Research, 75(1). 1-26. Bar-Tal, Y., Shrira, A., & Keinan, G. (2012). The effect of stress on cognitive structuring : A cognitive motivational model. Personality and Social Psychology Review,

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