Worrying Thoughts Limit Working Memory Capacity in Math Anxiety

Abstract

Sixty-one high-math-anxious persons and sixty-one low-math-anxious persons completed a modified working memory capacity task, designed to measure working memory capacity under a dysfunctional math-related context and working memory capacity under a valence-neutral context. Participants were required to perform simple tasks with emotionally benign material (i.e., lists of letters) over short intervals while simultaneously reading and making judgments about sentences describing dysfunctional math-related thoughts or sentences describing emotionally-neutral facts about the world. Working memory capacity for letters under the dysfunctional math-related context, relative to working memory capacity performance under the valence-neutral context, was poorer overall in the high-math-anxious group compared with the low-math-anxious group. The findings show a particular difficulty employing working memory in math-related contexts in high-math-anxious participants. Theories that can provide reasonable interpretations for these findings and interventions that can reduce anxiety-induced worrying intrusive thoughts or improve working memory capacity for math anxiety are discussed.

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

“…Numerical stimuli may be associated with negative and threatening valence for math-anxious individuals (Rubinsten et al, 2015); thus, the possible deleterious effects of math anxiety could be greater for tasks featuring threat-related stimuli. Some studies have shown that math anxiety difficulties are specifically related to tasks with numerical information (Ashcraft and Kirk, 2001) or to dysfunctional math-related contexts (Shi and Liu, 2016). In fact, Namkung et al (2019) in a recent metaanalysis pointed out that only those WM tasks that involve numerical information may prompt math anxiety.…”

“…Since then a number of studies have confirmed impaired WM performance related to math anxiety (e.g. Miller and Bichsel, 2004;Passolunghi et al, 2016;Shi and Liu, 2016;Trezise and Reeve, 2016;Justicia-Galiano et al, 2017). Indeed, some authors have argued that WM could mediate the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement (Hartwright et al, 2018).…”

Missed Opportunity in Mathematics Anxiety

“…Cognition and affect as they relate to mathematics anxiety were also examined by Shi and Liu (2016) using the Revised Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (RMARS) (Plake & Parker, 1982). They studied 61 highly mathematics anxious (HMA) undergraduates and 61 low mathematics anxious (LMA) undergraduates.…”

“…When an individual is given a mathematics problem, worry (i.e., the cognitive dimension) associated with mathematics anxiety causes the disruption to the working memory, so that it is less available for use. Thus, the individual's performance in mathematics would decline as the working memory is occupied by worry and unable to perform the calculation at hand (Maloney & Beilock, 2012;Shi & Liu, 2016).…”

The association between emotion regulation, physiological arousal, and performance in math anxiety

“…When participants were completing the math problems and analogies, participants were instructed to focus less on their own reactions to the problems and to instead concentrate on the steps of the problem, imagining that they were explaining the steps of solving the problem or completing the analogy to a friend or that their math teacher was the one explaining the solution to the problem. This distancing strategy was thought to target the ruminations that HMA individuals experience during math problems (Beilock, 2008), ameliorating these working memory deficits by encouraging individuals to focus on the steps of the problem using an internal narrative (DeCaro, Rotar, Kendra, & Beilock, 2010;Hopko et al, 1998;Shi & Liu, 2016).…”