Neural evidence for cognitive reappraisal as a strategy to alleviate the effects of math anxiety

A Daily Diary Investigation of the Fear of Missing Out and Diminishing Daily Emotional Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Cognitive Reappraisal

With modern societies becoming ever-increasingly interconnected due to technology and media, we have gained unprecedented access and exposure to other people's lives. This has resulted in a greater desire to constantly be socially connected with the activities of others, or the fear of missing out (FoMO). While much of the present available research has established the association between FoMO and diminished emotional well-being, little has been done to identify protective factors that can help one cope with the negative psychological consequences of FoMO. Utilizing data from a 7-day diary study of a large sample of young adults (N = 261), the current study aimed to examine the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal in attenuating diminished emotional well-being associated with FoMO. Multilevel modeling showed that cognitive reappraisal attenuated the day-to-day within-person associations between daily FoMO and indicators of daily emotional well-being such as negative affectivity, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.

Strategies for remediating the impact of math anxiety on high school math performance

Students with math anxiety experience excessive levels of negative emotion, including intrusive and distracting thoughts, when attempting to learn about math or complete a math assignment. Consequently, math anxiety is associated with maladaptive study skills, such as avoidance of homework and test preparation, creating significant impediments for students to fulfill their potential in math classes. To combat the impact of math anxiety on academic performance, we introduced two classroom-based interventions across two samples of high school math students: one intervention focused on emotion regulation (ER) using cognitive reappraisal, a technique for reframing an anxious situation, and the other intervention encouraged students to improve their study habits. The Study Skills (SS) intervention was associated with increased grades for highly anxious students during the intervention period, whereas the ER intervention was less efficacious in countering anxiety-related decreases in grade performance. The SS intervention encouraged highly math-anxious students to incorporate self-testing and overcome avoidant behaviors, increasing academic performance and ameliorating performance deficits associated with increased anxiety that were observed in both groups prior to intervention, and that persisted in the ER group. Notably, the benefits observed for the SS group extended to the post-intervention quarter, indicating the potential lasting effects of this intervention. These results support the hypothesis that using better study strategies and encouraging more frequent engagement with math resources would help highly-anxious students habituate to their math anxiety and ameliorate the negative effects of anxiety on performance, ultimately increasing their math comprehension and academic achievement.

Using Reappraisal to Improve Outcomes for STEM Teachers and Students

The many stressors associated with teaching can take a toll, resulting in high levels of burnout among teachers and reduced motivation and academic performance among students. This is especially true in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Despite the efficacy of emotion regulation interventions in pedagogical settings in general and in STEM teaching in particular, there is a lack of suitable interventions. We applied the process model of emotion regulation to STEM teaching and proposed a framework, STEM-Model of EmotioN regulation: Teachers' Opportunities and Responsibilities (STEM-MENTOR), to elucidate how the high demands of STEM teaching and contextual factors (e.g., culture, reforms, teacher-student interactions) may lead to intensified negative emotions and deficits in executive functioning and emotion regulation implementation. Teacher emotions, in turn, shape students' STEM-related achievements and epistemic emotions. Thus, teachers' emotion regulation skills have pervasive effects on teaching outcomes for both teachers and students. We illustrate how at each level of our framework, steps could be taken to improve teachers' emotional trajectory. Our proposed STEM-MENTOR framework has implications for theoretical understanding and may help to shape future interventions that focus on cognitive-emotional processes in STEM education.

Does anxiety explain why math-anxious people underperform in math?

Math-anxious people consistently underperform in math. The most widely accepted explanation for why this underperformance occurs is that math-anxious people experience heightened anxiety when faced with math, and this in-the-moment anxiety interferes with performance. Surprisingly, this explanation has not been tested directly. Here, using both self-report and physiological indices of anxiety, we directly test how much in-the-moment anxiety explains math-anxious underperformance. Results indicate that in-the-moment anxiety indeed explains why math-anxious people underperform-but only partially, suggesting a need to seriously consider alternative mechanisms. Results also showed that while some highly math-anxious individuals-those with high levels of heart rate variability-experienced less in-the-moment anxiety, they nevertheless performed no better at math. For these individuals, math-anxious underperformance must occur for reasons unrelated to in-the-moment anxiety. More broadly, our findings point to substantial individual heterogeneity in the mechanisms underlying math-anxious underperformance. Accounting for this mechanistic heterogeneity may prove vital for optimally boosting math performance in math-anxious individuals.

Ansiedade matemática: Uma visão global acerca da sua origem, impacto e possíveis intervenções

Com o crescente interesse e avanços nas áreas das STEM, a matemática afigura-se como essencial para o percurso escolar e profissional das crianças e jovens. Providenciar uma visão global acerca do que é a ansiedade matemática, quais são as suas causas, as suas consequências, e como intervir nesta problemática, é o objetivo deste artigo com carácter de revisão bibliográfica. Pesquisaram-se trabalhos científicos nas bases de dados: B-on, Proquest Psychology Journals, PsyARTICLES. Destacámos investigações e informação recentes com particular interesse para a prática de psicologia e de ensino nos contextos escolares. A ansiedade matemática tem um impacto negativo no bem-estar e desempenho dos sujeitos, podendo influenciar as escolhas educativas e profissionais destes. O contexto social desempenha um papel crucial no desenvolvimento desta problemática. Em relação às diferenças de género, os resultados são díspares, pelo qual tentamos compreender as razões para tais evidências. Por fim, no campo da intervenção, ainda são poucas as evidências científicas, no entanto é possível extrair algumas conclusões e estratégias a partir destas.

Implicit emotion regulation improves arithmetic performance: An ERP study

Available evidence suggests that emotions influence arithmetic, and explicit emotion regulation modulates the effect of anxiety on arithmetic performance. However, neural mechanisms by which implicit emotion regulation affects these phenomena remain unclear, particularly under distinct affective priming contexts. Twenty-two college students were required to perform multiple tasks in sequence, including an idioms matching task, a multiplication computational estimation task (MCE task), an emotion judgement task (EJ task), and an emotion assessment task (EA task). Behavioral performance was measured via accuracy and response time during the MCE task, and ratings of the EA task, while eletrophysiological response was measured via the contingent negative variation (CNV) elicited by completing the MCE task. Decreased response time and emotional intensity ratings were observed for priming emotion regulation idioms compared to priming neutral idioms. Priming emotion regulation idioms attenuated early CNV amplitudes under happiness priming, and attenuated both early and late CNV amplitudes under fear priming. These results suggested that implicit reappraisal and suppression are promising strategies to enhance arithmetic performance and alleviate the adverse effects of affective priming, especially under fear priming.

Math anxiety and deficient executive control: does reappraisal modulate this link?

The literature suggests an interplay between executive control functions and emotion regulation processes, with each playing a key role in math anxiety. We examined the relation between the use of two different emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal and suppression) and the ability to reduce emotional interference in high‐conflict situations (i.e., executive control of attention) in cases of math anxiety. A sample of 107 adults completed emotion regulation tendencies and math anxiety questionnaires and performed a flanker task following the priming of a math‐related or negative word. The findings revealed: (1) highly math‐anxious individuals had difficulty controlling emotional distractions induced by math information, even as simple as math‐related words, in high‐conflict conditions; and (2) the tendency to use reappraisal in everyday situations was associated with math‐anxious individuals’ ability to avoid heightened emotional reactions when encountering math‐related (i.e., threatening) information. These findings point to the efficacy of reappraisal‐focused intervention and suggest an innovative mechanism through which reappraisal reduces emotional reactions and improves performance among math‐anxious individuals, indicating a new way to approach interventions for math anxiety.

Math Anxiety Is Related to Math Difficulties and Composed of Emotion Regulation and Anxiety Predisposition: A Network Analysis Study

Current evidence suggests emotion regulation is an important factor in both math anxiety and math performance, but the interplay between these constructs is unexamined. Given the multicomponent structure of math anxiety, emotion regulation, and math performance, here, we aimed to provide a comprehensive model of the underlying nature of the links between these latent variables. Using the innovative network analysis approach, the study visualized the underlying links between directly observable and measurable variables that might be masked by traditional statistical approaches. One hundred and seventeen adults completed a battery of tests and questionnaires on math anxiety, emotion regulation, and math performance. The results revealed: (1) state math anxiety (the emotional experience in math-related situations), rather than trait math anxiety, was linked to anxiety predisposition, subjective valence of math information, and difficulties in emotion regulation; (2) the link between state math anxiety and math performance partialed out the link between trait math anxiety and performance. The study innovatively demonstrates the need to differentiate between traits and tendencies to the actual emotional experience and emotion regulation used in math anxiety. The results have important implications for the theoretical understanding of math anxiety and future discussions and work in the field.

First-year students' math anxiety predicts STEM avoidance and underperformance throughout university, independently of math ability

Math anxiety is widely considered a potential barrier to success in STEM. Current thinking holds that math anxiety is directly linked to avoidance of and underperformance in STEM domains. However, past evidence supporting these claims is limited in important ways. Perhaps most crucially, it is possible that math anxiety predicts STEM outcomes merely as a proxy for poor math skills. Here, we tested the link between math anxiety and subsequent STEM outcomes by measuring math anxiety, math ability, and several covariates in 183 first-semester university students. We then tracked students' STEM avoidance and achievement through four years at university via official academic transcripts. Results showed that math anxiety predicted both a reduction in how many STEM courses students took and, separately (i.e., controlling for one another), lower STEM grades. Crucially, these associations held after controlling for math ability (and other covariates). That math anxiety predicts math-related academic achievement independently of Math Ability suggests that, contrary to current thinking, math anxiety's effects on academic performance likely operate via mechanisms other than negatively affecting math ability. Beyond this, we show evidence that math anxiety can account for associations between math ability and STEM outcomes, suggesting that past links between math ability and real-world outcomes may, in fact, be at least partially explainable by attitudes toward math. These findings provide clear impetus for developing and testing interventions that target math anxiety specifically and suggest that focusing on math ability without additional attention to math anxiety may fail to optimally boost STEM outcomes.

Females' negative affective valence to math-related words

Emotional perceptions of math-related information can have profound effects on attitudes about math, which, in turn, may lead to decreased math achievements. A large body of research has documented that females have less positive attitudes and more negative affectivity to math than males. This study examined emotional valence ratings of math-related verbal stimuli among adults and performed a pioneering investigation of gender differences in emotional perceptions. A random sample of 290 adults completed a battery of online affect questionnaires designated to measure the relations of various math-related words to the field of mathematics (i.e., math loading) and compared the emotional valence of these words to words known to have negative and neutral valence. Results revealed that: (1) math-related words were rated as less threatening than words with negative valence, but more threatening than neutral words; (2) math loading ratings were the strongest and most significant predictor of the emotional valence ratings of math-related words; and (3) females rated math-related words and words with negative, but not neutral, valence as more threatening than males. The study concludes that negative affective valence is linked with math-related information, especially among females, and this finding has implications for researchers, parents, and educators.

The Association Between Emotion Regulation, Physiological Arousal, and Performance in Math Anxiety

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies may reduce the negative relationship between math anxiety and mathematics accuracy, but different strategies may differ in their effectiveness. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) to examine the effect of physiological arousal on performance during different applied ER strategies. We explored how ER strategies might affect the decreases in accuracy attributed to physiological arousal in high math anxious (HMA) individuals. Participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal (CR), expressive suppression (ES), or a “business as usual” strategy. During the ES condition, HMA individuals showed decreases in math accuracy associated with increased EDA, compared to low math anxious (LMA) individuals. For both HMA and LMA groups, CR reduced the association between physiological arousal and math accuracy, such that even elevated physiological arousal levels no longer had a negative association with math accuracy. These results show that CR provides a promising technique for ameliorating the negative relationship between math anxiety and math accuracy.

Anxiety, not regulation tendency, predicts how individuals regulate in the laboratory: An exploratory comparison of self-report and psychophysiology

Anxiety influences how individuals experience and regulate emotions in a variety of ways. For example, individuals with lower anxiety tend to cognitively reframe (reappraise) negative emotion and those with higher anxiety tend to suppress negative emotion. Research has also investigated these individual differences with psychophysiology. These lines of research assume coherence between how individuals regulate outside the laboratory, typically measured with self-report, and how they regulate during an experiment. Indeed, performance during experiments is interpreted as an indication of future behavior outside the laboratory, yet this relationship is seldom directly explored. To address this gap, we computed psychophysiological profiles of uninstructed (natural) regulation in the laboratory and explored the coherence between these profiles and a) self-reported anxiety and b) self-reported regulation tendency. Participants viewed negative images and were instructed to reappraise, suppress or naturally engage. Electrodermal and facial electromyography signals were recorded to compute a multivariate psychophysiological profile of regulation. Participants with lower anxiety exhibited similar profiles when naturally regulating and following instructions to reappraise, suggesting they naturally reappraised more. Participants with higher anxiety exhibited similar profiles when naturally regulating and following instructions to suppress, suggesting they naturally suppressed more. However, there was no association between self-reported reappraisal or suppression tendency and psychophysiology. These exploratory results indicate that anxiety, but not regulation tendency, predicts how individuals regulate emotion in the laboratory. These findings suggest that how individuals report regulating in the real world does not map on to how they regulate in the laboratory. Taken together, this underscores the importance of developing emotion-regulation interventions and paradigms that more closely align to and predict real-world outcomes.

Math anxiety and executive function: Neural influences of task switching on arithmetic processing

Math anxiety (MA) is associated with negative thoughts and emotions when encountering mathematics, often resulting in under-performance on math tasks. One hypothesized mechanism by which MA affects performance is through anxiety-related increases in working memory (WM) load, diverting resources away from mathematical computations. We examined whether this effect is specific to WM or whether the impact of MA extends to an overall depletion of executive function (EF) resources. In this fMRI experiment, we manipulated two separate factors known to impact EF demands-task-switching (TS) and increased WM load-in order to evaluate how MA relates to behavioral performance and neural activity related to mathematical calculations. Relative to a difficult non-math task (analogies), we observed MA-related deficits in math performance and reduced neural activity in a network of regions in the brain associated with arithmetic processing. In response to TS demands, higher levels of math anxiety were associated with a pattern of avoidance and disengagement. When switching from the control task, high math anxiety (HMA) was associated with disengagement from math trials, speeding through these trials, and exhibiting reduced neural activity in regions associated with arithmetic processing. The effects of math anxiety and WM were most pronounced at the lowest levels of WM load. Overall, the results of this study indicate that the effects of MA are broader than previously demonstrated and provide further insight into how EF deficits in MA might impact recruitment of neural resources that are important for successful math computations.