The Effect Of Math Anxiety On Number Processing

Math anxiety refers to the tension and anxiety in daily life and academic situations when working with numbers and solving math-related problems.The SNARC effect refers to the tendency that an individual responds faster with the right hand to relatively large numbers and with the left hand to relatively small numbers when performs parity judgment or magnitude comparison task.The SNARC effect reflects the relationship between number relationship between size and spatial representation,including both SNARC congruent and incongruent conditions according to the relationship between number size and spatial response.Previous studies have found that math-anxious individuals have impaired inhibition and therefore have an effect on the size of the SNARC effect,which may be related to the age of the subject and the difficulty of the inhibition task.However,the mechanism of processing of number space representations in the inhibitory task in math-anxious individuals of different ages is unclear.Based on this,the purpose of the present study will be to examine the processing mechanisms of mathematically anxious individuals of college and high school students in inhibitory control tasks of different difficulties.There are two experiments in this study,t,both of which include the Stroop paradigm and the Go/No-go paradigm.Experiment 1 investigated the processing mechanisms of college students’ math-anxious individuals in a SNARC task and a numerical Stroop task.First,a mixed experimental design of 2(group: low math anxiety group,high math anxiety group)× 2(SNARC: congruent,incongruent)× 2(sequence:ascending,descending)was conducted by combining the Go/No-go paradigm and parity judgments of numbers.The group was a between-group variable,and the SNARC and sequence were both within-group variables.The results showed that the correct rate of SNARC under descending order condition was significantly lower than that under inconsistent condition.It was found that the SNARC reaction time of congruent SNARC was significantly faster than that of inconsistent SNARC.The SNARC effect was found in the low math anxiety group,that is,the left hand was faster for small numbers and the right hand was faster for large numbers.Moreover,the SNARC effect intensity of the low math anxiety group was significantly higher than that of the high math anxiety group.Secondly,for the numerical Stroop task,this study set up a mixed experimental design of 2(group: low math anxiety group,high math anxiety group)×2(Stroop: congruent,incongruent)× 2(distance: far,near).In this task,individuals were required to suppress the effect of the physical size of numbers and make judgments about numbers of large magnitude.The correct rate results found higher correct rates for the Stroop congruent than for the Stroop incongruent;the correct rates were also higher at the far distance than at the near distance;and in the Stroop incongruent condition,the correct rates were significantly higher in the far condition than in the near condition.The reaction time results found that the reaction time in the congruent condition was significantly faster than that in the incongruent condition;the reaction time in the distant condition was significantly faster than that in the near condition;the reaction time in the distant condition was significantly faster than that in the near condition for both the congruent and incongruent tasks.There was no difference between high and low math anxiety groups in both correctness and reaction time.These results suggest that college students may have lower levels of math anxiety,are better able to inhibit the interference of irrelevant tasks in cognitive tasks,and that there is no difference in performance between the high and low math anxiety groups in simple inhibition tasks.Experiment 2 examined the high school students’ math anxiety group’s inhibitory control in the SNARC task and the color-word Stroop task.The color-word Stroop task was a 2(group: low math anxiety group,high math anxiety group)× 3(task type:congruent,incongruent,neutral)experimental design,with math anxiety group as a between–group variable and task type as a within–group variable.In the SNARC task,the response–time results revealed that only the high math anxiety group had a SNARC effect,i.e.,subjects responded faster to small numbers on the left hand and faster to large numbers on the right hand.Moreover,the strength of the SNARC effect was significantly higher in the high math anxiety group than in the low math anxiety group.This indicates that the high math anxiety group of high school students,were more susceptible to interference from irrelevant tasks,and also indicates that there is a difference in the level of anxiety between college students and high school students.In the color word Stroop task,the response time results revealed that the response time of the high math anxiety was significantly slower than that of the low math anxiety group;the response time of the high math anxiety group was significantly slower than that of the low math anxiety group in the incongruent and neutral conditions,and the difference between the high and low math anxiety groups was not significant in the congruent condition.In conclusion,the degree of math anxiety is related to age,and the degree of math anxiety of college students may be lower than that of high school students,so there are differences in the results of inhibition tasks.Moreover,the difference in inhibitory control ability of high and low math anxiety group is related to task difficulty.For the simple numerical Stroop task,no difference was found between the math anxiety groups,but for the SNARC task and the color-word Stroop task,there was a significant difference between the high and low math anxiety groups.This indicated that in the task with high memory load,the high math anxious group could not better inhibit the interference of stimuli unrelated to the task,and the ability of task conflict resolution was poor.In this study,in the anxious group of college students,it is found that the high math anxiety group performs better,indicating that the level of math motivation may also affect the task performance of the anxious group.Therefore,the suggestions for pedagogy,which aim at the anxious group of junior and senior high school students,this paper conducts training from simple math problems to gradually improve the level of math motivation of the group with high math anxiety,so as to help them improve their math performance.