Students who experience mathematics anxiety have long been suggested to engage in avoidance behaviors that negatively impact their mathematics performance. However, little is known about how these ...avoidance behaviors manifest for highly anxious students within the context of a mathematics course. Since the use of effortful study strategies has been shown to be an important predictor of students’ academic outcomes, we investigated whether highly mathematics-anxious college students would be less likely to utilize such strategies during exam preparation compared to their less-anxious peers. To measure this, we asked college students (N = 72) enrolled in introductory Calculus to complete a battery of anxiety-related surveys and to retrospectively report how they studied for the final exam in their Calculus course. Using theories of achievement emotion as well as recent research showing a relation between mathematics anxiety and students’ planned exam preparation behavior, we hypothesized that students experiencing mathematics anxiety would retrospectively report less engagement with effortful study strategies during exam preparation compared to their less-anxious peers. In line with our hypothesis, we found that solving practice problems was viewed by students as being one of the most effortful ways to prepare for a mathematics examination, and that mathematics anxiety was negatively associated with the proportion of study time students allocated to solving practice problems during exam preparation. These findings highlight the significant relation between mathematics anxiety and students’ self-regulated exam preparation behaviors, marking it as an important topic to consider when investigating ways to improve the mathematics performance of highly mathematics-anxious individuals.
More on the Fragility of Performance Beilock, Sian L; Kulp, Catherine A; Holt, Lauren E ...
Journal of experimental psychology. General,
12/2004, Letnik:
133, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In 3 experiments, the authors examined mathematical problem solving performance under pressure. In Experiment 1, pressure harmed performance on only unpracticed problems with heavy working memory ...demands. In Experiment 2, such high-demand problems were practiced until their answers were directly retrieved from memory. This eliminated choking under pressure. Experiment 3 dissociated practice on particular problems from practice on the solution algorithm by imposing a high-pressure test on problems practiced 1, 2, or 50 times each. Infrequently practiced high-demand problems were still performed poorly under pressure, whereas problems practiced 50 times each were not. These findings support
distraction theories
of choking in math, which contrasts with considerable evidence for
explicit monitoring
theories of choking in sensorimotor skills. This contrast suggests a skill taxonomy based on real-time control structures.
When Paying Attention Becomes Counterproductive Beilock, Sian L; Carr, Thomas H; MacMahon, Clare ...
Journal of experimental psychology. Applied,
03/2002, Letnik:
8, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Two experiments examined the impact of attention on sensorimotor skills. In Experiment 1, experienced golfers putted under dual-task conditions designed to distract attention from putting and under ...skill-focused conditions that prompted attention to step-by-step putting performance. Dual-task condition putting was more accurate. In Experiment 2, right-footed novice and experienced soccer players dribbled through a slalom course under dual-task or skill-focused conditions. When using their dominant right foot, experts again performed better in the dual-task condition. However, when using their less proficient left foot, experts performed better in the skill-focused condition. Novices performed better under skill-focus regardless of foot. Whereas novices and the less-proficient performances of experts benefit from online attentional monitoring of step-by-step performance, high-level skill execution is harmed.
Math anxiety-negative feelings toward math-is hypothesized to be associated with the avoidance of math-related activities such as taking math courses and pursuing STEM careers. However, there is ...little experimental evidence for the math anxiety-avoidance link. Such evidence is important for formulating how to break this relationship. We hypothesize that math avoidance emerges when one perceives the costs of effortful math engagement to outweigh its benefits and that this perception depends on individual differences in math anxiety. To test this hypothesis, we developed an effort-based decision-making task in which participants chose between solving easy, low-reward problems and hard, high-reward problems in both math and nonmath contexts. Higher levels of math anxiety were associated with a tendency to select easier, low-reward problems over harder, high-reward math (but not word) problems. Addressing this robust math anxiety-avoidance link has the potential to increase interest and success in STEM fields.
We examined whether individual differences in working memory influence the facility with which individuals learn new categories. Participants learned two different types of category structures:
...rule-based and
information-integration. Successful learning of the former category structure is thought to be based on explicit hypothesis testing that relies heavily on working memory. Successful learning of the latter category structure is believed to be driven by procedural learning processes that operate largely outside of conscious control. Consistent with a widespread literature touting the positive benefits of working memory and attentional control, the higher one’s working memory, the fewer trials one took to learn rule-based categories. The opposite occurred for information-integration categories – the lower one’s working memory, the fewer trials one took to learn this category structure. Thus, the positive relation commonly seen between individual differences in working memory and performance can not only be absent, but reversed. As such, a comprehensive understanding of skill learning – and category learning in particular – requires considering the demands of the tasks being performed and the cognitive abilities of the performer.
A solid foundation in math is important for children's long‐term academic success. Many factors influence children's math learning—including the math content students are taught in school, the ...quality of their instruction, and the math attitudes of students' teachers. Using a large and diverse sample of first‐grade students (n = 551), we conducted a large‐scale replication of a previous study (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 2010, 1860; n = 117), which found that girls in classes with highly math anxious teachers learned less math during the school year, as compared to girls whose math teachers were less anxious about math. With a larger sample, we found a negative relation between teachers' math anxiety and students' math achievement for both girls and boys, even after accounting for teachers' math ability and children's beginning of year math knowledge, replicating and extending those previous results. Our findings strengthen the support for the hypothesis that teachers' math anxiety is one factor that undermines children's math learning and could push students off‐track during their initial exposure to math in early elementary school.
Prior research showed that girls learned less math when their teachers were highly math anxious. In this large‐scale replication, we found that both boys and girls learn less math in classrooms with highly math anxious teachers, replicating and extending the previous study’s findings.
Anxiety and cognition Maloney, Erin A.; Sattizahn, Jason R.; Beilock, Sian L.
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science,
July/August 2014, Letnik:
5, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this review we discuss the interplay between anxiety and cognition, illustrating how anxiety can compromise performance on cognitively‐demanding tasks and lead people to perform below their ...ability. Using math anxiety and test anxiety as examples, we highlight key findings from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, to show that how one approaches an anxiety‐inducing situation can have a large impact on how that person ultimately performs. We end by discussing who is most susceptible to anxiety‐induced poor performance and suggest promising techniques which may help to reduce the negative impact of anxiety on performance. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:403–411. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1299
This article is categorized under:
Psychology > Emotion and Motivation
Can covert sensorimotor simulation of stimulus-relevant actions influence affective judgments, even when there is no intention to act? Skilled and novice typists picked which of two letter dyads they ...preferred. In each pair, one dyad, if typed using standard typing methods, would involve the same fingers (e.g., FV); the other would be typed with different fingers (e.g., FJ). Thus, if typed, dyads of the former kind should create more motor interference than dyads of the latter kind. Although individuals could not explain how the dyads differed, skilled typists preferred those typed with different fingers. Novices showed no preference. Moreover, a motor task performed while making dyad preference judgments attenuated skilled typists' preference--but only when the motor task involved the specific fingers that would be used to type the dyads. These findings suggest that in skilled typists, perceiving letters prompts covert sensorimotor simulation of typing them, which in turn influences affective judgments about this information.
The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural response to familiar and unfamiliar, sport and non-sport environmental sounds in expert and novice athletes. Results ...revealed differential neural responses dependent on sports expertise. Experts had greater neural activation than novices in focal sensorimotor areas such as the supplementary motor area, and pre- and postcentral gyri. Novices showed greater activation than experts in widespread areas involved in perception (i.e. supramarginal, middle occipital, and calcarine gyri; precuneus; inferior and superior parietal lobules), and motor planning and processing (i.e. inferior frontal, middle frontal, and middle temporal gyri). These between-group neural differences also appeared as an expertise effect within specific conditions. Experts showed greater activation than novices during the sport familiar condition in regions responsible for auditory and motor planning, including the inferior frontal gyrus and the parietal operculum. Novices only showed greater activation than experts in the supramarginal gyrus and pons during the non-sport unfamiliar condition, and in the middle frontal gyrus during the sport unfamiliar condition. These results are consistent with the view that expert athletes are attuned to only the most familiar, highly relevant sounds and tune out unfamiliar, irrelevant sounds. Furthermore, these findings that athletes show activation in areas known to be involved in action planning when passively listening to sounds suggests that auditory perception of action can lead to the re-instantiation of neural areas involved in producing these actions, especially if someone has expertise performing the actions.
Learning to read is a critical but often challenging academic task for young children. In the current study, we explore the relation between children's reading affect--particularly anxiety--and ...reading achievement in the early years of reading acquisition. We hypothesized that reading anxiety would relate to reading achievement across the school year and that boys and girls might show differential patterns in the relation between reading anxiety and achievement due to the common stereotype that boys underperform in reading. A sample of first and second grade students completed measures of reading anxiety, positive reading affect, math achievement, and reading achievement in the fall and spring. Results show that reading anxiety and reading achievement share a bi-directional relation in which fall reading anxiety predicts spring reading achievement and vice versa. Furthermore, the pattern of relation between reading anxiety and achievement differs by gender: boys appear more susceptible to the reciprocal damaging effects of reading anxiety on reading achievement across the school year. Finally, reading achievement shares a stronger relation with reading anxiety than with positive reading affect, perhaps because of the phenomenon in which negative relative to positive experiences have a greater psychological impact.
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Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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