Sian is one of the world’s leading experts on the science behind “choking under pressure” and the brain and body factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to your golf swing. She has authored two critically acclaimed books published in more than a dozen languages – Choke (2010) and How the Body Knows Its Mind (2015) – as well as 120+ peer-reviewed publications that have reshaped how we think about performance, stress, and success.
Books
“The idea that you’re not born a choker or a thriver, that everyone has to practice and that’s how you are able to show what you know when it matters most, I think, gives me hope.”
– Sian for NPR
Selected Research
An exhaustive list of Sian’s research can be found on her Google Scholar profile.
Performing Under Pressure
- Kardan, O., Layden, E., Choe, K. W., Lyu, M., Zhang, X., Beilock, S. L., Rosenberg, M. D., & Berman, M. G. (2020). Scale-invariance in brain activity predicts practice effects in cognitive performance. BioRxiv.
- Beilock, S.L., Schaeffer, M.W., & Rozek, C.S. (2017). Understanding and addressing performance anxiety. In A.J. Elliot, C.S. Dweck, & D.S. Yeager (Eds.), Handbook of Competence and Motivation (2nd Edition): Theory and Application. Guilford Press.
- Henry, A., Sattizahn, J.R. Norman, G.J., Beilock, S.L., & Maestripieri, D. (2017) Performance during competition outcome in relation to testosterone and cortisol among women. Hormones and Behavior
- Park, D., Schaeffer, M. W., Nolla, K., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2017). How do generic statements impact performance? Evidence for entity beliefs. Developmental Science.
- Sattizahn, J.R., Moser, J.S., & Beilock, S.L. (2016) A Closer Look at Who “Chokes Under Pressure”. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 5(4), 470-477.
- Woods, E.A., Hernandez, A.E., Wagner, V.E., & Beilock, S.L. (2014). Expert athletes activate somatosensory and motor planning regions of the brain when passively listening to familiar sports sounds. Brain and Cognition, 87, 122-133.
Math Anxiety & STEM Achievement
- Jenifer, J.B., Levine, S.C. & Beilock, S.L. (2022). Studying while anxious: mathematics anxiety and the avoidance of solving practice problems during exam preparation in college calculus. ZDM Mathematics Education
- Jenifer, J. B., Rozek, C. S., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2022). Effort(less) exam preparation: Math anxiety predicts the avoidance of effortful study strategies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication.
- Schaeffer, M. W., Rozek, C. S., Maloney, E. A., Berkowitz, T., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2021). Elementary school teachers’ math anxiety and students’ math learning: A large‐scale replication. Developmental Science.
- Pantoja, N., Schaeffer, M. W., Rozek, C. S., Beilock, S. L., & Levine, S. C. (2020). Children’s Math Anxiety Predicts Their Math Achievement Over and Above a Key Foundational Math Skill. Journal of Cognition and Development.
- Choe, K. W., Jenifer, J. B., Rozek, C. S., Berman, M. G., & Beilock, S. L. (2019). Calculated avoidance: Math anxiety predicts math avoidance in effort-based decision-making. Science Advances.
- Herts, J.B., Beilock, S.L. & Levine, S.C. (2019) The role of parents’ and teachers’ math anxiety in children’s math learning and attitudes. In A. Dowker, I. Mammarella & S. Caviola. Mathematics Anxiety.
- Rozek, C. S., Ramirez, G., Fine, R. D., & Beilock, S. L. (2019). Reducing Socioeconomic Disparities in the STEM Pipeline Through Student Emotion Regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- Schaeffer, M. W., Rozek, C. S., Berkowitz, T., Levine, S. C, & Beilock, S. L. (2018). Dis-associating the relation between parents’ math anxiety and children’s math achievement: Long-term effects of a math app intervention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1782
- Berkowitz, T., Schaeffer, M. W., Rozek, C. S., Beilock, S. L., & Levine, S. C (2018). Supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Learning by Helping Families Overcome Math Anxiety. In M. Caspe, T. Woods, and L. Kennedy (Eds.) Promising Practices for Engaging Families in STEM Learning. Information Age Publishing.
- Gunderson, E.A., Park, D., Maloney, E.A., Beilock, S. L., & Levine, S.C. (2018). Reciprocal relations among motivational frameworks, math anxiety, and math achievement in early elementary school. Journal of Cognition and Development, 19(1), 21-46
- Chang, H., Sprute, L., Maloney, E.A., Beilock, S.L, & Berman, M.G. (2017). SImple arithmetic: not so simple for highly math anxious individuals. Social cognitive and affective nueroscience, 12(12), 1940-1949.
- Herts, J.B., & Beilock, S.L. (2017) From Janet T Spence’s manifest anxiety scale to the present day: Exploring math anxiety and its relation to math achievement. Sex Roles, 77 (11-12), 718-724
- Foley, A.E.*, Herts, J.B.*, Borgonovi, F., Guerriero, S., Levine, S.C., & Beilock, S.L. (2017). The Math Anxiety-Performance Link: A Global Phenomenon. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(1).
- Chang, H., & Beilock, S. L. (2016). The math anxiety-math performance link and its relation to individual and environmental factors: a review of current behavioral and psychophysiological research. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 33-38.
- Park, D., Gunderson, E.A., Tsukayama, E., Levine, S.C., & Beilock, S.L (2016). Young children’s motivational frameworks and math achievement: Relation to teacher-reported instructional practices, but not teacher theory of intelligence. Journal of Educational Psychology,108(3), 300-313.
- Berkowitz, T., Schaeffer, M.W., Rozek, C.S., Maloney, E.A., Levine, S.C., & Beilock, S.L. (2016). Response to comment on “Math at home adds up to achievement in school.” Science, 351(6278), 1161.
- Ramirez, G., Chang, H., Maloney, E.A., Levine, S.C., & Beilock, S.L. (2016). On the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement in early elementary school: The role of problem solving strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 83-100.
- Sprute, L., & Beilock, S. L. (2016). Math anxiety in community college students. MathAMATYC Educator, 7, 39-45.
- Kontra, C., Lyons, D., Fischer, S. & Beilock, S.L. (2015). Physical experience enhances science learning. Psychological Science 0956797615569355.
- Park, D., Ramirez, G., & Beilock, S.L. (2014). The Role of Expressive Writing in Math Anxiety. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
Cognition & Development
- Lyons, I. M., Beilock, S. L. (2018) Characterizing the neural coding of symbolic quantities. Neuroimage.
- Lyons, I. M., Ramirez, G., Maloney, E. A., Rendina, D. N., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2018). Spatial Anxiety: A novel questionnaire with subscales for measuring three aspects of spatial anxiety. Journal of Numerical Cognition.
- Trofatter, C., Kontra, C., Beilock, S.L., & Goldin-Meaow, S. (2015). Gesturing has a larger impact on problem-solving than action, even when action is accompanied by words. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30,3.
- Lyons, I. M., Ansari, D., & Beilock, S. L. (2015). Qualitatively different coding of symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers in the human brain. Human Brain Mapping, 36, 475-488.
- Maloney, E., Sattizahn, J. & Beilock, S.L. (2014). Anxiety and Cognition. WIREs Cognitive Science, 5(4), 403-411.