Insecure attachment is associated with math anxiety in middle childhood.

Guy Bosmans,Bert De Smedt

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01596

Abstract

Children’s anxiety for situations requiring mathematical problem solving, a concept referred to as math anxiety, has a unique and detrimental impact on concurrent and long-term mathematics achievement and life success. Little is known about the factors that contribute to the emergence of math anxiety. The current study builds on the hypothesis that math anxiety might reflect a maladaptive affect regulation mechanism that is characteristic for insecure attachment relationships. To test this hypothesis, 87 children primary school children (Mage = 10.34 years; SDage = 0.63) filled out questionnaires measuring insecure attachment and math anxiety. They all completed a timed and untimed standardized test of mathematics achievement. Our data revealed that individual differences in math anxiety were significantly related to insecure attachment, independent of age, sex, and IQ. Both tests of mathematics achievement were associated with insecure attachment and this effect was mediated by math anxiety. This study is the first to indicate that math anxiety might develop in the context of insecure parent–child attachment relationships.

Highlights

Against the background of research on broader anxiety-related problems, which has convincingly shown that such problems result from maladaptive coping strategies that some children develop in the context of insecure attachment relationships (Brumariu and Kerns, 2010; Vasey et al, 2014), Insecure attachment, math anxiety, and mathematics the present study investigated for the first time the hypothesis that individual differences in math anxiety reflect differences in attachment security
An increasing number of attachment-related studies emphasize that studying attachment in this age-group is essential to understand long-term development of anxiety problems (Bosmans et al, 2014). Both parents are important attachment figures to understand links between attachment and mathematics achievement (Keller et al, 2008), the current study only focused on attachment to the mother, in order to limit the number of questionnaires that had to be completed by the participants
In the mediation analyses, we explored whether math anxiety mediated the association between insecure attachment and poor mathematics achievement

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Thereis growing consensus that individual differences in mathematics achievement are not merely a product of cognitive factors, such as numerical magnitude processing (e.g., De Smedt et al, 2013) or working memory (e.g., Friso-Van den Bos et al, 2013),but that such differences are partially explained by the anxiety to perform tasks involving mathematical problem solving, a concept that has been referred to as math anxiety (e.g., Ma, 1999; Ashcraft et al, 2007; Maloney and Beilock, 2012; Young et al, 2012). Studies that aim to understand individual differences in math anxiety in young children are emerging slowly, research on the origin of broader anxiety-related problems has a much more established tradition (Bernstein et al, 1996) These data have convincingly shown that anxiety-related problems result from the maladaptive coping strategies that some children develop in the context of insecure attachment relationships (Brumariu and Kerns, 2010; Vasey et al, 2014). It is reasonable to assume that more avoidantly attached children might avoid seeking help of parents’ and/or teachers’ while studying, which, in turn, might lead to less proficiency in academic domain knowledge and increased anxiety when they have to perform in that academic domain This leads to the prediction that the link between insecure attachment and poor mathematics achievement might be mediated by math anxiety. To evaluate whether the associations between insecure attachment, math anxiety and mathematics achievement were not explained by general intellectual abilities, a measure of intelligence was administered

Participants

Procedure

RESULTS

DISCUSSION