Erin A. Maloney

Math anxiety: who has it, why it develops, and how to guard against it

Basic math skills are important for success in school and everyday life. Yet many people experience apprehension and fear when dealing with numerical information, termed math anxiety. Recently, researchers have started to probe the antecedents of math anxiety, revealing some surprising insights into its onset, risk factors, and remediation.

Mathematics anxiety affects counting but not subitizing during visual enumeration.

Individuals with mathematics anxiety have been found to differ from their non-anxious peers on measures of higher-level mathematical processes, but not simple arithmetic. The current paper examines differences between mathematics anxious and non-mathematics anxious individuals in more basic numerical processing using a visual enumeration task. This task allows for the assessment of two systems of basic number processing: subitizing and counting. Mathematics anxious individuals, relative to non-mathematics anxious individuals, showed a deficit in the counting but not in the subitizing range. Furthermore, working memory was found to mediate this group difference. These findings demonstrate that the problems associated with mathematics anxiety exist at a level more basic than would be predicted from the extant literature.

The effect of mathematics anxiety on the processing of numerical magnitude

In an effort to understand the origins of mathematics anxiety, we investigated the processing of symbolic magnitude by high mathematics-anxious (HMA) and low mathematics-anxious (LMA) individuals by examining their performance on two variants of the symbolic numerical comparison task. In two experiments, a numerical distance by mathematics anxiety (MA) interaction was obtained, demonstrating that the effect of numerical distance on response times was larger for HMA than for LMA individuals. These data support the claim that HMA individuals have less precise representations of numerical magnitude than their LMA peers, suggesting that MA is associated with low-level numerical deficits that compromise the development of higher level mathematical skills.

Challenging the reliability and validity of cognitive measures: The case of the numerical distance effect

The numerical distance effect (NDE) is one of the most robust effects in the study of numerical cognition. However, the validity and reliability of distance effects across different formats and paradigms has not been assessed. Establishing whether the distance effect is both reliable and valid has important implications for the use of this paradigm to index the processing and representation of numerical magnitude in both behavioral and neuroimaging studies. In light of this, we examine the reliability and validity of frequently employed variants (and one new variant) of the numerical comparison task: two symbolic comparison variants and two nonsymbolic comparison variants. The results of two experiments demonstrate that measures of the NDE that use nonsymbolic stimuli are far more reliable than measures of the NDE that use symbolic stimuli. With respect to correlations between measures, we find evidence that the NDE that arises using symbolic stimuli is uncorrelated with the NDE that is elicited by using nonsymbolic stimuli. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for the use of the NDE as a metric of numerical processing and representation in research with both children and adults.

Math at home adds up to achievement in school

With a randomized field experiment of 587 first-graders, we tested an educational intervention designed to promote interactions between children and parents relating to math. We predicted that increasing math activities at home would increase childrens math achievement at school. We tested this prediction by having children engage in math story time with their parents. The intervention, short numerical story problems delivered through an iPad app, significantly increased childrens math achievement across the school year compared to a reading (control) group, especially for children whose parents are habitually anxious about math. Brief, high-quality parent-child interactions about math at home help break the intergenerational cycle of low math achievement.A little bit of math goes a long way Childrens emerging language skills are supported when their caregivers read to them at home. Math skills, however, are often relegated to the schools. Berkowitz et al. developed a mobile-device app designed to help caregivers bring a little bit of math into the home. Improved math skills were apparent within months for elementary school students. Improvements were most dramatic in families where the caregivers reported themselves to be anxious about math. Science, this issue p. 196 A small intervention breaks down barriers in math-anxious households. With a randomized field experiment of 587 first-graders, we tested an educational intervention designed to promote interactions between children and parents relating to math. We predicted that increasing math activities at home would increase children’s math achievement at school. We tested this prediction by having children engage in math story time with their parents. The intervention, short numerical story problems delivered through an iPad app, significantly increased children’s math achievement across the school year compared to a reading (control) group, especially for children whose parents are habitually anxious about math. Brief, high-quality parent-child interactions about math at home help break the intergenerational cycle of low math achievement.

Intergenerational Effects of Parents’ Math Anxiety on Children’s Math Achievement and Anxiety

A large field study of children in first and second grade explored how parents’ anxiety about math relates to their children’s math achievement. The goal of the study was to better understand why some students perform worse in math than others. We tested whether parents’ math anxiety predicts their children’s math achievement across the school year. We found that when parents are more math anxious, their children learn significantly less math over the school year and have more math anxiety by the school year’s end—but only if math-anxious parents report providing frequent help with math homework. Notably, when parents reported helping with math homework less often, children’s math achievement and attitudes were not related to parents’ math anxiety. Parents’ math anxiety did not predict children’s reading achievement, which suggests that the effects of parents’ math anxiety are specific to children’s math achievement. These findings provide evidence of a mechanism for intergenerational transmission of low math achievement and high math anxiety.

Mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat: shared mechanisms, negative consequences and promising interventions

Proficiency in mathematics is a major advantage in industrialised nations. Here we discuss several emotional impediments to mathematics achievement, namely mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat. Synthesising findings from empirical studies in the fields of cognitive, social, and educational psychology, as well as neuroscience, we discuss some of the ways that affective factors can negatively impact mathematical performance and lead to avoidance of mathematics and mathematics-related fields. We bring together the mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat literatures by suggesting that these two phenomena share a common underlying mechanism, which causes disturbance in mathematics performance. We end by suggesting a number of potential interventions aimed at reducing the negative consequences of anxiety and stereotype threat on mathematics performance – interventions fueled by an understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat work to impact performance.

Tracking the transition from sublexical to lexical processing: On the creation of orthographic and phonological lexical representations

Participants read aloud nonword letter strings, one at a time, which varied in the number of letters. The standard result is observed in two experiments; the time to begin reading aloud increases as letter length increases. This result is standardly understood as reflecting the operation of a serial, left-to-right translation of graphemes into phonemes. The novel result is that the effect of letter length is statistically eliminated by a small number of repetitions. This elimination suggests that these nonwords are no longer always being read aloud via a serial left-to-right sublexical process. Instead, the data are taken as evidence that new orthographic and phonological lexical entries have been created for these nonwords and are now read at least sometimes by recourse to the lexical route. Experiment 2 replicates the interaction between nonword letter length and repetition observed in Experiment 1 and also demonstrates that this interaction is not seen when participants merely classify the string as appearing in upper or lower case. Implications for existing dual-route models of reading aloud and Shares self-teaching hypothesis are discussed.

Math Anxiety A Factor in Math Achievement Not to Be Ignored

The United States is currently not producing enough graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields to meet the demands of a technology-dependent society. Although there are many efforts in place to improve STEM education in the United States, most notably, President Obama’s Educate to Innovate campaign, these efforts focus mostly on innovating the teaching of math content and less on the role of affective factors in math achievement. Here we discuss a phenomenon known as math anxiety (i.e., negative feelings of tension and fear that many people experience when engaging in math) and the implications math anxiety carries for math success and STEM engagement. We begin by highlighting the most recent findings from research in psychology, education, and neuroscience on math anxiety. We then discuss the consequences of math anxiety as well as likely causes and promising remediations. We suggest that the initiatives currently underway to improve STEM involvement and achievement would benefit from educating current and future teachers, parents, and even students about math anxiety, its causes, consequences, and possibilities for amelioration.

Anxiety and cognition

In this review we discuss the interplay between anxiety and cognition, illustrating how anxiety can compromise performance on cognitively-demanding tasks and lead people to perform below their ability. Using math anxiety and test anxiety as examples, we highlight key findings from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, to show that how one approaches an anxiety-inducing situation can have a large impact on how that person ultimately performs. We end by discussing who is most susceptible to anxiety-induced poor performance and suggest promising techniques which may help to reduce the negative impact of anxiety on performance. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:403-411. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1299 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.