Improvement of orthography test performance by relaxation exercises: results of a controlled field experiment in basic secondary education

The effects of relaxation exercises on orthography performance in language arts education of fifth to seventh graders were experimentally tested. Participants were 399 basic secondary school students and their language arts teachers from the Hauptschule, a German type of secondary education covering grades five to nine that leads to a basic educational degree. Half of the students were trained in their classrooms in the basic autogenic training (AT) formulas (self‐suggestions of passive self‐attention, heaviness and warmth) and in the technique of reactivation after relaxation. After completing a regular dictation test students applied the relaxation exercise for four minutes on their own and were then given the opportunity to reread what they had written and to correct any mistakes they found on the test. In comparison to 200 students in the control group (who were not trained in the systematic relaxation exercises), who were also given the opportunity to revise their texts after a four‐minute break, the experimental group students made significantly fewer mistakes and received better grades on the test. In addition, the results show that there were significantly fewer correct revisions and significantly more incorrect revisions of the dictation tests made by the students in the control group, thus worsening their academic performance by the possibility of ‘self‐correction’. Students and teachers evaluated AT exercises positively. Implications of the results for the application of AT in the classroom are discussed.