Math-anxious Individuals Research Articles

Response inhibition deficits in math-anxious individuals.

We examined whether math anxiety is related to a response inhibition deficit and, if so, whether it is a domain-specific inhibition deficit in numerical tasks or a general inhibition deficit. Behavioral performance and electroencephalogram activity were recorded while 28 highly math-anxious (HMA) and 28 low math-anxious (LMA) individuals performed both a numerical and a non-numerical Go/Nogo task. In the numerical task, single-digit numbers were presented, and participants were asked to press a button if the number was even. In the non-numerical task, letters were presented, and the button had to be pressed if the letter was a vowel. Nogo trials were answered less accurately and elicited larger Nogo-N2 and Nogo-P3 than Go trials in both tasks and both groups. Importantly, behavioral and brain response differences between tasks were only found in the HMA group. First, they were more error-prone in numerical Nogo than in non-numerical Nogo trials; and second, their Nogo-N2 and N2d (Nogo-Go difference) were smaller in the numerical task than in the non-numerical task. No differences were found in the LMA group. These results suggest that HMA individuals' response inhibition is impaired specifically when dealing with numbers, which could contribute to their low achievement in math tasks.

Response monitoring in math-anxious individuals in an arithmetic task

We examine whether math anxiety is related to altered response monitoring in an arithmetic task. Response-locked event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were evaluated in 23 highly (HMA) and 23 low math-anxious (LMA) individuals while they performed an arithmetic verification task. We focused on two widely studied ERPs elicited during error processing: error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe). Correct-related negativity (CRN), an ERP elicited after a correct response, was also studied. The expected ERN following errors was found, but groups did not differ in its amplitude. Importantly, LMA individuals showed less negative CRN and more positive Pe amplitudes than their more anxious peers, suggesting more certainty regarding response accuracy and better adaptive behavioral adjustment after committing errors in an arithmetic task in the LMA group. The worse control over response performance and less awareness of correct responses in the HMA group might reduce their ability to ‘learn from errors’.

Math anxiety and attention: Biased orienting to math symbols or less efficient attentional control?

Previous research about the existence of an attentional bias for math in highly math-anxious (HMA) individuals shows inconsistent results, and methodologies used so far cannot distinguish the various components of attentional bias. Here we adapted Grafton and MacLeod (2014)’s methodology to assess biases linked to math anxiety in engagement and disengagement when task-irrelevant math and neutral symbols are briefly presented. Twenty-one HMA and 21 low math-anxious individuals were asked to perform the attentional task just after solving an arithmetic task expected to generate group differences in state anxiety. Considering attentional control theory, state anxiety will likely increase allocation of attention to task-irrelevant stimuli. Therefore, individual differences in efficiency responding to this task, which despite being simple and non-mathematical is interrupted by task-irrelevant stimuli, were also analyzed to study whether HMA individuals show reduced attentional control. Our results provide evidence against the presence of an attentional bias towards/against mathematical symbols in visuospatial orienting of the HMA population, neither in the form of an engagement bias nor as a disengagement bias. Rather, HMA individuals were slower and could not take advantage of a longer interval to overcome distraction, which suggest less efficient attentional control, at least when they experience higher state anxiety. Therefore, it is unlikely that an attentional bias for math may originate or aggravate math anxiety. However, reduced attentional control may underlie the less efficient processing on math tasks usually shown by HMA individuals, so research on attention in math anxiety should keep focusing on HMA’s difficulties in executive control.

MATH ANXIETY AND THE SHIFTING FUNCTION: AN EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL STUDY OF ARITHMETIC TASK SWITCHING.

Why is math anxiety usually related to less efficient math processing? According to attentional control theory, anxiety leads to reduced attentional control, which often entails a greater investment of resources (e.g., more time or effort) to carry out a cognitive task. The executive functions mainly affected by anxiety are inhibition and shifting. Previous studies suggest that math anxiety may impair the inhibitory function. In the present study, the relationship between math anxiety and shifting efficiency when switching between two-digit additions and subtractions was examined. Twenty highly math-anxious and 20 low math-anxious individuals participated in an event-related potential (ERP) transition-cueing experiment. Math anxiety was expected to delay the shifting process, leading to a larger switch cost in response time and no centroparietal cue-locked switch-specific positivity registered in the electroencephalogram during the cue-target interval. Highly math-anxious individuals showed a larger switch cost than their low math-anxious peers. Asymmetrical switch effects between operations in response time were found in both groups, which might be due to larger sequential difficulty effects after subtractions than after additions. The cue-locked switch-specific positivity was present only in the low math-anxious group. The present results suggest that highly math-anxious individuals take longer to shift task sets. Additionally, the highly math-anxious group showed a more positive frontal P2 after the cue that announced a switch to subtraction, probably indicating stronger attentional capture by this cue, because the most threatening condition is anticipated. Taken together, these data suggest that math anxiety also impairs attentional control when switching between arithmetic tasks.

Does anxiety explain why math-anxious people underperform in math?

Math-anxious people consistently underperform in math. The most widely accepted explanation for why this underperformance occurs is that math-anxious people experience heightened anxiety when faced with math, and this in-the-moment anxiety interferes with performance. Surprisingly, this explanation has not been tested directly. Here, using both self-report and physiological indices of anxiety, we directly test how much in-the-moment anxiety explains math-anxious underperformance. Results indicate that in-the-moment anxiety indeed explains why math-anxious people underperform—but only partially, suggesting a need to seriously consider alternative mechanisms. Results also showed that while some highly math-anxious individuals—those with high levels of heart rate variability—experienced less in-the-moment anxiety, they nevertheless performed no better at math. For these individuals, math-anxious underperformance must occur for reasons unrelated to in-the-moment anxiety. More broadly, our findings point to substantial individual heterogeneity in the mechanisms underlying math-anxious underperformance. Accounting for this mechanistic heterogeneity may prove vital for optimally boosting math performance in math-anxious individuals.

Proactive control of attention in math-anxious individuals

Attentional control deficit has been proposed as one of the reasons for lower arithmetical performance in people with high math anxiety (HMA). Previous research trying to discern whether this deficit concerned proactive or reactive use of attentional control has been criticised because the methodologies used were mostly suited to investigating reactive control only. The aim of this study was to investigate proactive control in HMA individuals in a classical Stroop task. Twenty HMA and 20 low math-anxious individuals (LMA) named the ink colour in which congruent and incongruent colour words as well as X strings (neutral condition) were presented. The HMA group was slower than their LMA peers in the congruent and incongruent conditions only. Furthermore, HMA individuals showed a higher interference effect. Last, only LMA participants showed a facilitatory effect of the congruent condition. These results are interpreted as indicating the presence in the HMA individuals of a task conflict between the task to perform (ink naming) and an irrelevant task triggered by the stimuli (word reading). Task conflict is evident only when proactive control, responsible for maintaining the current goals, is too weak to solve the competition between tasks. Therefore, this study confirms that HMA individuals find it difficult to implement attention proactively.

Problem-Solving among Math Anxious Individuals: The Role of Advanced Strategy and Testing of Online Anxiety

Math anxiety (MA) is negatively associated with math performance. To explore the role of online or stable MA in advanced strategy use, 52 college students solved verbal multiple-choice mathematical problems. MA was negatively related to advanced strategy use. Online anxiety and advanced strategy use were unique predictors of accuracy. Using mediation analysis, we discovered that advanced strategy uses partially mediated the relation between MA and math performance. The results show that the selection of a non-advanced strategy is one of the cognitive processes that explained the negative relation between MA and performance, and that MA has a strong contextual component.

Math anxiety and deficient executive control: does reappraisal modulate this link?

The literature suggests an interplay between executive control functions and emotion regulation processes, with each playing a key role in math anxiety. We examined the relation between the use of two different emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal and suppression) and the ability to reduce emotional interference in high‐conflict situations (i.e., executive control of attention) in cases of math anxiety. A sample of 107 adults completed emotion regulation tendencies and math anxiety questionnaires and performed a flanker task following the priming of a math‐related or negative word. The findings revealed: (1) highly math‐anxious individuals had difficulty controlling emotional distractions induced by math information, even as simple as math‐related words, in high‐conflict conditions; and (2) the tendency to use reappraisal in everyday situations was associated with math‐anxious individuals’ ability to avoid heightened emotional reactions when encountering math‐related (i.e., threatening) information. These findings point to the efficacy of reappraisal‐focused intervention and suggest an innovative mechanism through which reappraisal reduces emotional reactions and improves performance among math‐anxious individuals, indicating a new way to approach interventions for math anxiety.

Anxiety-Related Difficulties With Complex Arithmetic

Abstract. Human behavior depends on the interplay between cognition and emotion. Negative emotions like anxiety affect performance, particularly in complex tasks, by limiting cognitive resources – known as the anxiety–complexity effect. This study set out to replicate the anxiety–complexity effect in a web-based experiment. We investigated individual differences in math anxiety – a negative emotional response specific to math – and arithmetic performance ( N = 382). The mental arithmetic task consisted of a two-digit addition and subtraction, with/without carrying or borrowing, respectively. As expected and preregistered, higher math anxiety was related to poorer arithmetic performance, especially in complex tasks – indicating the anxiety–complexity effect. Consequently, the negative math anxiety-performance link is especially pronounced for complex arithmetic, which requires calculations across place-values and thus working memory resources. This successful replication of the anxiety–complexity effect suggests that math-anxious individuals have particular difficulties in complex arithmetic.

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

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.

Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals

This study aimed to investigate whether the ordinal judgments of high math-anxious (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals differ. Two groups of 20 participants with extreme scores on the Shortened Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (sMARS) had to decide whether a triplet of numbers was presented in ascending order. Triplets could contain one-digit or two-digit numbers and be formed by consecutive numbers (counting condition), numbers with a constant distance of two or three (balanced) or numbers with variable distances between them (neutral). All these triplets were also presented unordered: sequence order in these trials could be broken at the second (D2) or third (D3) number. A reverse distance effect (worse performance for ordered balanced than for counting trials) of equal size was found in both anxiety groups. However, HMA participants made more judgment errors than their LMA peers when they judged one-digit counting ordered triplets. This effect was related to worse performance of HMA individuals on a symmetry span test and might be related to group differences on working memory. Importantly, HMAs were less accurate than LMA participants at rejecting unordered D2 sequences. This result is interpreted in terms of worse cognitive flexibility in HMA individuals.

The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect in highly math-anxious individuals: An ERP study

The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect was examined in highly (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals performing a number comparison in an ERP study. The SNARC effect consists of faster latencies when the response side is congruent with number location in the mental number line (MNL). Despite the stronger SNARC effect in the HMA group, their responses in incongruent trials were slower than in congruent trials only for the largest numerical magnitudes. Moreover, HMAs showed a less positive centroparietal P3b component in incongruent trials than in congruent ones, but only for the largest magnitudes. Since the SNARC effect arises during response selection and P3b positivity decreases with the difficulty of decision, this result suggests that HMA individuals might find it more difficult than LMAs to control the conflict between the automatically activated location of numbers in the MNL and the response side, especially in more cognitively demanding trials.

Math self-efficacy, not emotional self-efficacy, mediates the math anxiety-performance relationship in undergraduate students

A clear inverse relationship exists between efficacy and anxiety and anxiety and performance in mathematics. However, efficacy is domain- and task-specific, so the role that specific types of efficacy play in the anxiety-performance relationship is less clear. Emotional self-efficacy moderates this relationship in children, but research has not yet examined its role with math anxiety and performance in undergraduate students who have more developed emotional regulation. Further, understanding the role of self-efficacy for different tasks (i.e., efficacy for math versus for emotion regulation) is important to understanding math anxiety and how to intervene for math anxious individuals. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to explore the moderating and/or mediating role of both math self-efficacy and emotional self-efficacy in undergraduate students using indirect effects analyses. One hundred and fifteen students at a mid-sized state university in the Midwest United States completed self-report measures of emotional self-efficacy, math self-efficacy, and math anxiety before completing a standardized measure of math performance. Results of indirect effects analyses determined that math self-efficacy had an indirect effect on the anxiety-performance relationship while emotional self-efficacy had neither indirect nor moderating effects on the math anxiety-performance relationship.

Neural evidence for cognitive reappraisal as a strategy to alleviate the effects of math anxiety.

Math anxiety (MA) describes feelings of tension, apprehension and fear that interfere with math performance. High MA (HMA) is correlated with negative consequences, including lower math grades, and ultimately an avoidance of quantitative careers. Given these adverse consequences, it is essential to explore effective intervention strategies to reduce MA. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the efficacy of cognitive reappraisal as a strategy to alleviate the effects of MA. Cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, has been shown to decrease negative affect and amygdala responsivity to stimuli that elicit negative emotion. We compared a reappraisal strategy to participants’ natural strategy for solving math problems and analogies. We found that HMA individuals showed an increase in accuracy and a decrease in negative affect during the reappraisal condition as compared to the control condition. During math reappraise trials, increased activity in a network of regions associated with arithmetic correlated with improved performance for HMA individuals. These results suggest that increased engagement of arithmetic regions underlies the performance increases we identify in HMA students when they use reappraisal to augment their math performance. Overall, cognitive reappraisal is a promising strategy for enhancing math performance and reducing anxiety in math anxious individuals.

The neurophysiological relationship between number anxiety and the EEG gamma-band

ABSTRACT The development of math anxiety is thought to originate at a young age, as a form of number anxiety, but has not been investigated extensively. Research has shown greater levels of EEG gamma-band activity are experienced during threat perception and attentional bias. This has been identified in high math anxious individuals when confronted with math-based tasks, but has not yet been explored for number anxiety specifically. Single-digit numbers and letters were presented to 15 high and 15 low math anxious participants, who were required to observe the stimuli. High math anxious participants displayed significantly greater levels of gamma activity during number observation compared to letter observation. Findings suggest high math anxious individuals may have a threat-related response to observation of simple numerical stimuli. Further behavioural investigations are needed, but high math anxious individuals may display avoidance towards number and math due to a threat response associated with increased gamma activity.

Math Anxiety and Working Memory Updating: Difficulties in Retrieving Numerical Information From Working Memory.

This study aimed to determine whether math anxiety was related to working memory (WM) updating performance and, specifically, to the retrieval and substitution components of updating. A set of WM updating (WMU) tasks that involve different retrieval and substitution requirements were administered to 114 university students. In addition, participants completed a math anxiety assessment on two occasions: 1–2 weeks before and immediately prior to task administration to increase the likelihood of observing the relationship between math anxiety and updating performance. The results showed a relationship between math anxiety scores and updating performance. Math anxious individuals took longer and made more errors, especially on tasks that required retrieving information from WM. These results suggest that math anxious individuals are less efficient when it comes to accessing numerical information in WM. Consequently, they may struggle with math-related tasks that involve retrieving numerical information from WM.

Spatial processing in a mental rotation task: Differences between high and low math-anxiety individuals

Previous studies suggested that highly math-anxious (HMA) individuals invest more attentional resources than their low math-anxious (LMA) peers in numerical tasks, and have worse spatial skills. We aimed to explore whether they also need to apply more resources in spatial tasks. In this study, HMA and LMA individuals saw normal or mirror-reversed letters in six orientations and made mirror-normal decisions. In both groups, response times and errors increased with angular deviation from upright and the ERP mental rotation effect was found. However, HMAs were slower to respond than their LMA counterparts. Interestingly, the HMA group showed a larger P3b in greater deviations for normal letters and in all mirrored letters. Since P3b amplitude reflects the attentional resources invested in the categorization of relevant stimuli, HMA individuals may need to devote more processing effort than their LMA peers when performing mental rotation. This finding is consistent with the Attentional Control Theory.

Anticipation of difficult tasks: neural correlates of negative emotions and emotion regulation

BackgroundDifficult cognitive tasks are often associated with negative feelings. This can be already the case for the mere anticipation of having to do a difficult task. For the case of difficult math tasks, it was recently suggested that such a negative emotional response may be exclusive to highly math-anxious individuals. However, it is also conceivable that negative emotional responses simply reflect that math is perceived as difficult. Here we investigated whether non-math-anxious individuals also experience negative emotional responses when anticipating to do difficult math tasks.MethodsWe compared brain activation following the presentation of a numerical cue indicating either difficult or easy upcoming proportion magnitude comparison tasks.ResultsComparable to previous results for highly math-anxious individuals we observed a network associated with negative emotions to be activated in non-math-anxious individuals when facing cues indicating a difficult upcoming task. Importantly, however, math anxiety scores did not predict the neural response. Furthermore, we observed activation in areas associated with processes of cognitive control areas such as anterior cingulate cortex, which were suggested to play a key role in emotion regulation.ConclusionActivation in the emotion processing network was observed when anticipating an upcoming difficult (math) task. However, this activation was not predicted by individual’ degree of math anxiety. Therefore, we suggest that negative emotional responses to difficult math tasks might be a rather common reaction not specific to math-anxious individuals. Whether or not this initial negative response impairs math performance, however, might depend on the ability to regulate those emotions effectively.

Spatial processing in highly math-anxious individuals: an event-related brain potential study

Spatial processing in highly math-anxious individuals: an event-related brain potential study

Number line estimation in highly math-anxious individuals.

In this study, we aimed to investigate the difficulties highly math-anxious individuals (HMA) may face when having to estimate a number's position in a number line task. Twenty-four HMA and 24 low math-anxiety (LMA) individuals were presented with four lines with endpoints 0-100, 0-1,000, 0-100,000, and 267-367 on a computer monitor on which they had to mark the correct position of target numbers using the mouse. Although no differences were found between groups in the frequency of their best-fit model, which was linear for all lines, the analysis of slopes and intercepts for the linear model showed that the two groups differed in performance on the less familiar lines (267-367 and 0-100,000). Lower values for the slope and higher values for the intercept were found in the HMA group, suggesting that they tended to overestimate small numbers and underestimate large numbers on these non-familiar lines. Percentage absolute error analyses confirmed that HMA individuals were less accurate than their LMA counterparts on these lines, although no group differences were found in response time. These results indicate that math anxiety is related to worse performance only in the less familiar and more difficult number line tasks. Therefore, our data challenge the idea that HMA individuals might have less precise numerical representations and support the anxiety-complexity effect posited by Ashcraft and colleagues.