People's fear and anxiety about doing math--over and above actual math ability--can be an impediment to their math achievement. We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female...

Math anxiety has an important impact on mathematical development and performance. However, although math anxiety is supposed to be a transcultural trait, assessment instruments are scarce and are validated mainly for Western cultures so far. Therefore, we aimed at examining the transcultural generality of math anxiety by a thorough investigation of the validity of math anxiety assessment in Eas...

In the current study, we explored how a person's physiological arousal relates to their performance in a challenging math situation as a function of individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity and math-anxiety. Participants completed demanding math problems before and after which salivary cortisol, an index of arousal, was measured. The performance of lower WM individuals did not dep...

Math anxiety indicates psychologically a negative mind-set towards solving mathematical problems which impacts on students‟ learning practices and outcomes. In looking more closely at why a remarkable no of students may be struggling for improvement in mathematics in comparison to other subjects, it is timely to consider, the math anxiety factor. This literature review looks at the concept of m...

Mathematics is a necessary skill that people use throughout their lives, such as when they travel, use money, or keep track of time. Therefore, mathematics is an important skill to learn at school. Unfortunately, many children and adults feel stressed and anxious when they have to do math. People who experience feelings of stress when faced with math-related situations may be experiencing what ...

Math anxiety is a common phenomenon which can have a negative impact on numerical and arithmetic performance. However, so far little is known about the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. This mini review provides an overview of studies investigating the neural correlates of math anxiety which provide several hints regarding its influence on math performance: while behavioral studies mostly o...

Mathematics is associated with anxiety for many students; an emotion linked to lower well-being and poorer learning outcomes. While findings typically show females to report higher trait math anxiety than males, no gender differences have to date been found in state (i.e., momentary) math anxiety. The present diary study aimed to replicate previous findings in investigating whether levels of ac...

a r t i c l e i n f o Focused breathing Executive control We examined the potential effectiveness of four brief interventions, three behavioral and one nutritional, for helping high math-anxious college students regulate negative emotions immediately prior to a time-pressured arithmetic test. Participants with low versus high math anxiety performed a timed arithmetic task after practicing one o...

Underperformance in math is a problem with increasing prevalence, complex etiology, and severe repercussions. This study examined the etiological heterogeneity of math performance in a sample of 264 pairs of 12-year-old twins assessed on measures of math achievement, numerosity and math anxiety. Latent profile analysis indicated five groupings of individuals representing different patterns of m...

Although behavioral difficulties are well documented in reading disabilities, little is known about the relationship between math ability and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Here, we use standardized measures to investigate the relation among early math ability, math anxiety, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a group of 366 second and third graders. Math achievement wa...