Domain-specific anxiety relates to children’s math and spatial performance.

Abstract

Mathematical and spatial reasoning abilities during childhood predict later success in male-dominated science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, yet relatively little is known about the affective correlates of children’s math and spatial performance or gender differences therein. In the present research, we assessed math and spatial anxiety in 394 elementary-school children (ages 6 to 12 years) and investigated their relations to math achievement and spatial reasoning performance, respectively. In addition, we evaluated children’s verbal anxiety and reading ability to determine the domain specificity of relations between anxiety and cognitive performance during childhood. At the zero-order level, math, spatial, and verbal anxiety were moderately correlated with one another and with children’s performance in the corresponding cognitive domains. Importantly, however, all three forms of anxiety displayed some domain specificity in their relations to cognitive performance. Gender differences in math and spatial anxiety were also domain-specific, with girls reporting significantly greater math and spatial anxiety, but not verbal anxiety, across the age range tested. These results demonstrate that math and spatial anxiety represent unique constructs early in development, exhibiting specificity in their associations with gender and cognitive performance during the first years of formal schooling.

Spatial anxiety mediates the sex difference in adult mental rotation test performance

“…Furthermore, spatial anxiety was not necessarily dependent on a person's level of trait anxiety, providing evidence that there may be individual differences in domain-specific anxieties, such as spatial anxiety, which are not fully explained by generalized anxiety. The literature has supported the prevalence of underlying skills that make up spatial ability; therefore, domain-specific anxieties possibly exist that each explain individual differences in domainspecific skill (Lauer et al, 2018).…”

“…Other studies have shown that experiences with spatial activities (e.g., playing with a Lego blocks; Nazareth et al, 2013), beliefs in gender-roles/gender-stereotypes (Neuburger et al, 2015;Reilly & Neumann, 2013), activation of the negative stereotype that men are better than women at mental rotation (Levine et al, 2005), confidence about performance (Estes & Felker, 2012), and even general anxiety felt while taking the test (Thoresen et al, 2016), all explain sex differences in mental rotation performance. Recently, calls have been made for more research addressing whether certain affective factors, such as domain-specific anxiety (i.e., spatial anxiety), explain some of these sex differences (e.g., Lauer, Esposito, & Bauer, 2018;Levine, Foley, Lourenco, Ehrlich, & Ratliff, 2016;Pruden et al, 2020).…”

Childhood wayfinding experience explains sex and individual differences in adult wayfinding strategy and anxiety

“…Finally, there is reason to believe that wayfinding anxiety partially explains sex and individual differences in navigational ability and may be related to the navigation strategies males and females use. High levels of anxiety, or feelings of apprehension (Lauer, Esposito, & Bauer, 2018), can be debilitating and impair performance on cognitive tests (Hund & Minarik, 2006;Lauer et al, 2018;Lyons et al, 2018;Vytal, Cornwell, Arkin, Letkiewicz, & Grillon, 2013), and females display higher levels of general anxiety than do males (McLean & Anderson, 2009). However, anxiety can also be domain-specific, occurring only in certain situations or when performing certain kinds of tasks (e.g., math/spatial tests; Lauer et al, 2018).…”

“…High levels of anxiety, or feelings of apprehension (Lauer, Esposito, & Bauer, 2018), can be debilitating and impair performance on cognitive tests (Hund & Minarik, 2006;Lauer et al, 2018;Lyons et al, 2018;Vytal, Cornwell, Arkin, Letkiewicz, & Grillon, 2013), and females display higher levels of general anxiety than do males (McLean & Anderson, 2009). However, anxiety can also be domain-specific, occurring only in certain situations or when performing certain kinds of tasks (e.g., math/spatial tests; Lauer et al, 2018). One domain-specific type of anxiety is spatial anxiety, which is triggered by tasks that require spatial reasoning (e.g., mental rotation, spatial perception; Lawton, 1994).…”

Exploring mechanisms of rapid automatized naming to arithmetic skills in Chinese primary schoolers

“…Early mathematic skills are predictive of later achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines (Benbow & Arjmand, 1990). Failure to become proficient in mathematic skills represents a major academic obstacle for children and is related to risks for anxiety, internalizing problems, and other socioemotional maladjustment (Lauer, Esposito, & Bauer, 2018; Passiatore et al, 2017). Given that RAN has been shown as a robust predictor of children's arithmetic performance (Cui et al, 2017; Georgiou et al, 2013; Koponen et al, 2017), the underlying mechanisms that may account for the relation between RAN and arithmetic performance remain unclear.…”