The Association Between Emotion Regulation, Physiological Arousal, and Performance in Math Anxiety

Rachel G Pizzie,David J M Kraemer

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.639448

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies may reduce the negative relationship between math anxiety and mathematics accuracy, but different strategies may differ in their effectiveness. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) to examine the effect of physiological arousal on performance during different applied ER strategies. We explored how ER strategies might affect the decreases in accuracy attributed to physiological arousal in high math anxious (HMA) individuals. Participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal (CR), expressive suppression (ES), or a “business as usual” strategy. During the ES condition, HMA individuals showed decreases in math accuracy associated with increased EDA, compared to low math anxious (LMA) individuals. For both HMA and LMA groups, CR reduced the association between physiological arousal and math accuracy, such that even elevated physiological arousal levels no longer had a negative association with math accuracy. These results show that CR provides a promising technique for ameliorating the negative relationship between math anxiety and math accuracy.

Highlights

Math anxiety represents a significant challenge for many students, as anxious emotion creates obstacles for math achievement (Hembree, 1990)
In order to estimate the effects of our linear mixed models (LMMs), we constructed this model with our fixed factors math anxiety and additional experimental variables, and random effects accounting for individual differences among participants
Accuracy: Stimulus Type × ER Strategy × MA We calculated an LMM evaluating the effect of math anxiety, stimulus type, and emotion regulation, on task accuracy was calculated across all participants

Summary

Introduction

Math anxiety represents a significant challenge for many students, as anxious emotion creates obstacles for math achievement (Hembree, 1990). Math anxiety refers to the feelings of anxiety, nervousness, tension and apprehension related to anticipating or calculating mathematics (Hembree, 1990; Ma, 1999; Ashcraft, 2002; Suárez-Pellicioni et al, 2015; Namkung et al, 2019). We explored the relationship between math anxiety, physiological arousal (measured by electrodermal activity, EDA) and math accuracy across various emotion regulation (ER) strategies. Our results suggest that especially compared to an ER strategy called expressive suppression (ES), cognitive reappraisal (CR) was associated with ameliorating the negative relationship between math anxiety, physiological arousal, and math accuracy. Math anxiety is thought to be related to other experiences of anxiety, such as general anxiety or test anxiety (Kazelskis, 1998; Kazelskis et al, 2000; Ashcraft, 2002; Suárez-Pellicioni et al, 2015; Dowker et al, 2016). Math anxiety is associated with fairly specific negative emotions, thoughts, and performance deficits in mathematics; increased math anxiety is associated with

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion