INTROSPECTION
Keeping a journal can jump-start your working memory--which impacts attention and problem-solving—and may improve academic performance, according to Kitty Klein, Ph.D., a psychology professor at North Carolina State University.
"Stressful events compete for attentional resources," explains Klein. "If you can't concentrate on something, you have all kinds of problems."
The researchers asked 71 college freshmen to write about adjusting to college, a stressful event, or to keep track of daily activities, decidedly less stressful. Each group wrote for 20 minutes on three occasions. After seven weeks, working memory skills were evaluated with arithmetic and vocabulary tests
Subjects who wrote about stressful feelings scored higher than those who simply recorded the days' events.
To find out why, Klein instructed 111 students to write about an extremely negative or extremely positive experience with the caveat that they think deeply about the subject. A control group focused on a neutral experience: time management.
