Monday Evening suggested that a tachistoscope was the demonic device - the thing showing one line of text at a time, where the speed could be ratcheted up to force us to read faster.

I don't know the name but that sure sounds like it. (The fact that it was used for military purposes, in psychological research, and in marketing studies...well, throw politics in there and you could probably make a comment about evil devices. Though the military purpose was to help fighter pilots recognize "friendly" aircraft so they would have fewer mishaps in shooting down the plane of an ally.)

I wonder now why there was such an emphasis on speeding us up when I was in school. We also used to do "timed tests" in math - where we'd be handed a sheet of 100 addition or multiplication problems and given (at first) 5 minutes to complete them. And then later, three minutes, then two. (And it was a different set of problems, or at least a different arrangement, each time, so you could not memorize.)

I HATED that. I was an anxious, nervous little kid and it made it worse having to do math knowing the kitchen timer the teacher used was going to ring at some point, forcing you to stop. I think I performed worse under the pressure of time - both in terms of speed and accuracy - because I knew that buzzer was going to go off.

(I also hated, with the passion of 1000 exploding suns, "Perfection" and similar board games. I mean, seriously, for someone like me: way to play on whatever pathology I had already developed: call a game "Perfection" and then have it set on a timer, where if you did not complete the task in time, all your work was undone. People thought that was fun?)

The tachistoscope stuff I remember best from 7th grade; the math tests started in 3rd grade but continued (with shorter time and more difficult problems) for several years hence.

A couple days back, the New York Times had a story called Understanding the Anxious Mind. And I found myself nodding a lot while reading it. (I almost called my mom and asked her if I reacted like the "edgy" babies in the story when I was a baby. I know she once complained that I was not a "cuddly" baby and that I tended toward colic and other minor complaints). I do think there's probably an underlying type, some kind of "funny wiring" or over/under production of neurotransmitters, that leads to the "anxious" type of person.

I guess I'm lucky in that, while I'm bothered by it some times, I'm not sufficiently bothered by it for it to rule my life. (Like one of the young women interviewed ("Mary"), I think I managed to channel a lot of my anxiety into diligence as I grew up). I've never looked into anti-anxiety meds simply because most of the time I can cope just fine on my own. (And getting regular exercise seems to drain away some of the anxiety. And making time every day to do something just for myself, whether it's reading a book that has nothing to do with my work, or knitting, or sewing, or noodling around on the piano)

(That said: I'm probably NOT as anxious as the "high reactive" kids in that study. I cannot remember ever vomiting before an exam. Well, other than one time I had food poisoning, I mean)

But you know, with all the emphasis that there's been on different "learning styles," and different "emotional intelligences" and such, I hope the schools maybe have dropped the timed-test things - or at least reduced their emphasis, out of understanding of the anxious little kids who get freaked out by them. (Thank goodness, I was never freaked out enough to wet my pants, like another little kid in my class did)

I suppose the timed stuff was big in the 1970s (when I was a kid in school) because of some directive from on high - perhaps it was part of the "we welcome our new Computer Overlords" idea that also had us learning all kinds of different crazy bases (When is the last time you had to use base six? Or even base two, the much vaunted "binary" code? I suspect outside of programmers, very few people do. I mean, it's cool to know it, but I probably would have done better at that point in time with more emphasis on fractions, which I openly admit I had trouble with until 7th grade or so.)

Another interesting side thought, related to the "anxious nervous little kid waiting for and hating the impending buzzer": most mornings I wake up before my alarm clock goes off. In fact, I often wake up three or four times in the post-midnight time period, squint at the clock, calculate how long I have left to sleep, and, depending, either go back to sleep or figure "Bag it, the thing's going to ring in 1/2 hour anyway" and get up and start my workout early. I'm sure the two things - hating to hear a timer buzz and my body triggering itself to wake up before the alarm (even though currently the "alarm" is the CD of Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing "Rock Me" that is in the CD player right now).