The Relationship Among Mathematics Anxiety, Working Memory And Mathematics Achievement

Mathematics anxiety not only effects development of individual emotion, but also effects development of individual mathematics cognition. Ashcraft (1994,1998) attempted to develop a program of research that examines the possible cognitive consequences and correlates of mathematics anxiety and got a lot of valuable results. In this article, we discuss initially the relationships among mathematics anxiety, the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad from work memory capacity, as well as their correlations with achievement of mathematics tasks and math-related tasks which request high work memory capacity. And then we will seek the theory explanation that can explain the relationship.In this research, we revised the sMARS (short Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale; Alexander & Martray, 1989) and the revised scale fits to the psychometric guideline. This research includes two experimental designs. The first experiment probed into gender difference of mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement,and then probed into the relationship among mathematics anxiety, two working memory subsystems and mathematics achievement. It's 3×2×2 mixed design: Mathematics anxiety (high, medium, low), working memory (the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad) and mathematics task (no carry, carry). The experimental results indicate that there's not significant gender difference of mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement, that both the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad can influence significantly mathematics achievement in mathematics tasks which request high work memory capacity, and that the visuospatial sketchpad is the medium variable.The second experiment developed the relationship among mathematics anxiety, two working memory subsystems and mathematics achievement by math-related tasks (numbers transformation, letters transformation) which request high work memory capacity. It's 3×2×2 mixed design: Mathematics anxiety (high, medium, low),working memory(the phonological loop , the visuospatial sketchpad) and math-related tasks (letters transformation, numbers transformation). The experimental results indicate that both the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad can influence significantly achievement in numbers transformation tasks which request high work memory capacity, and that the visuospatial sketchpad is the medium variable . But in letters transformation tasks which request high work memory capacity, the phonological loop can influence significantly task achievement, while the visuospatial sketchpad only influences slightly task achievement. These two working memory subsystem isn't the medium variable between mathematics anxiety and math-related task achievement.