Attention networks and attentional bias in young adults with mathematics anxiety

Abstract

Mathematics Anxiety (MA) is a debilitating negative reaction to arithmetic that affects up to 61% of students of all ages worldwide. It is defined as feelings of tension that affect the handling of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in different situations. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms through which MA acts and is maintained, focusing on the attention system. I also added measures of cognitive skills understood to play a major role in anxiety disorders. This resulted in three specific aims: 1) test the presence of an attention bias towards mathematical information in MA, 2) explore how MA affects the efficiency of the attention networks, and 3) establish how different personality traits affect MA. We recruited 132 Spanish-Speaking adults (ages 18-29, M=20.62, SD=2.44; 93 females) from universities in the San Juan area. SA1 was tested through a modified attention shifting task. There was a significant relation between accuracy and MA in the three conditions, meaning that as levels of MA increased the participants accuracy in the overall task lowered with math-words having a larger effect. Various reasons for the lack of specificity between conditions are discussed. SA2 was tested through a modified version of the Attention Network Test-Revised. Results demonstrated difficulties engaging with mathematical targets as levels of MA increased which could be due to participant’s avoidance of the upcoming mathematical task. These results are supported by research on mathematical avoidance which postulates that high MA individuals tend to avoid mathematics related activities. For SA3 we created a regression model with MA scores and scores from self-report instruments. Model selection was performed using the corrected Akaike information criterion. The resulting model explained 51% of the variance for the presence of MA. The variables included in the model can be approached as adaptive (emotion regulation and cognitive flexibility) or maladaptive (test anxiety and worry), meaning that development of these cognitive skills can either exacerbate or reduce MA’s effect on performance. Interventions against MA should aim to minimize the effects of worry and test anxiety while enhancing adaptive cognitive skills.