Academic Stress in School Children: Behavioural and Electrophysiological Outcomes Study

Academic performance has been found to be a significant source of stress among children and adolescents. Understanding the behavioural and electrophysiological correlates of academic stress implies the need for stress management programs in schools. The present study was conducted to compare the behavioural and electrophysiological outcome of the stress levels between high and low rankers in high school students. A case-controlled study design was adopted, comprised of ten high rankers and ten low rankers, high school female students. The ranking was obtained from the school records of the previous examination. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was administered to assess the subjectively experienced stress, followed by 19-channel resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) recording for ten minutes (five minutes each for eyes closed and eyes open) with a one-minute interval between conditions. The results from the PSS score indicate that low rankers experienced a significantly higher amount of stress compared to the high rankers (p-value = 0.011). The power spectrum analysis of the EEG data showed significantly lower alpha power in occipital (p-value = 0.02) and higher beta power at parietal (p-value = 0.038), central (p-value = 0.015) and the occipital (p-value = 0.021) regions among low rankers. Higher alpha activity has a positive correlation with relaxation and higher beta correlates with higher stress, indicates that low ranking students are more prone to be stressed that the high rankers. Conclusion: The higher stress found among low rankers provides indirect confirmatory evidence towards the negative association between academic performance and stress.