The Effect Of Math Anxiety On Strategy Utilization In Arithmetic Cognition Task: Age-Related Differences

In recent years, strategy utilization has been one of the frontier topics incognitive science and psychology. There are various strategies. The ability to choosethe appropriate strategy will determine the individual’s performance. Strategyutilization in arithmetic tasks is constrained by a number of factors. This researchexamines the effect of math anxiety on strategy utilization.Math anxiety not only affects the individual’s personality and socialdevelopment, but also is one of the important individual differences factors whichaffect strategy utilization. At present, there are fewer researches on the relationshipbetween math anxiety and strategy utilization. And computational estimation taskhas not been involved. Computational estimation is an effective tool to examine theflexibility, diversity and variability of strategy utilization, and it is different frommental arithmetic although they also have similarities. So this research usedcomputational estimation task and mental arithmetic task to examine whether mathanxiety also affects the strategy utilization in computational estimation and whetherstrategy utilization is different between low-anxious and high-anxious participants inthe two tasks. At the same time, this research selected fourth-grade children,sixth-grade children and adults to compare their performance when solving two-digitaddition problems in order to find the age-related differences of strategy utilization.On the basis of controlling the arithmetic skills, used a novel paradigm---thechoice/no-choice method, to investigate the strategy utilization in bothcomputational estimation and mental arithmetic. The computational estimation taskset three conditions to investigate the performance of using rounding-up androunding-down strategy for participants with different levels of math anxiety: thechoice condition (choose the strategy that yields the closest estimate of correct answer), no choice/rounding-up condition (use the rounding-up strategy on allproblems), no choice/rounding-down condition (use the rounding-down strategy onall problems). The mental arithmetic task included three conditions to investigate thestrategy utilization for individuals with different levels of math anxiety：The choicecondition (choose the strategy that generates a correct answer more quickly to eachproblem), no choice/partial-decomposition condition (use the partial-decompositionstrategy to solve all problems), no choice/full-decomposition (use thefull-decomposition strategy to solve all problems).The findings indicated:(1) Math anxiety affected the strategy utilization in both computational estimationand mental arithmetic. Low-anxious participants used strategies more efficientlythan participants with high math anxiety. This effect also showed age-relateddifferences. Sixth-grade children were more vulnerable to be interfered by mathanxiety.(2) Math anxiety did not affect the performance of strategy utilization for adults inthe arithmetic task, while it affected children’s strategy utilization. High-gradechildren (sixth grade) were more susceptible to be interfered by math anxiety. Itcould be speculated that the early stage of children in primary school was lesssusceptible to the effect of math anxiety. Math anxiety effect was becoming moreand more obvious with children’s increasing age. And with the development of thecognitive capacity subsequently, the effect of math anxiety gradually weakened.(3) The effects of math anxiety on strategy utilization were different betweencomputational estimation and mental arithmetic. Computational estimation was morelikely to be affected by math anxiety.(4) Arithmetic performance of three different grades showed differences. Adultsused strategy more efficiently than children, and high-grade children used strategymore efficiently than low graders.