Mathematical anxiety is linked to reduced cognitive reflection: a potential road from discomfort in the mathematics classroom to susceptibility to biases

Behavioral and Brain Functions

Kinga Morsanyi²  Chiara Busdraghi¹  Caterina Primi¹ 

[1] Department of NEUROFARBA, Section of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

[2] School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast, David Keir Building, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK

关键词: Working memory;    Test anxiety;    Rationality;    Numeracy;    Mathematical anxiety;    Heuristics and biases;    Dual-task manipulation;    Decision making;    Cognitive reflection test;   

Others  :  1084004
DOI  :  10.1186/1744-9081-10-31

 received in 2014-01-09, accepted in 2014-08-25,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

When asked to solve mathematical problems, some people experience anxiety and threat, which can lead to impaired mathematical performance (Curr Dir Psychol Sci 11:181–185, 2002). The present studies investigated the link between mathematical anxiety and performance on the cognitive reflection test (CRT; J Econ Perspect 19:25–42, 2005). The CRT is a measure of a person’s ability to resist intuitive response tendencies, and it correlates strongly with important real-life outcomes, such as time preferences, risk-taking, and rational thinking.

Methods

In Experiments 1 and 2 the relationships between maths anxiety, mathematical knowledge/mathematical achievement, test anxiety and cognitive reflection were analysed using mediation analyses. Experiment 3 included a manipulation of working memory load. The effects of anxiety and working memory load were analysed using ANOVAs.

Results

Our experiments with university students (Experiments 1 and 3) and secondary school students (Experiment 2) demonstrated that mathematical anxiety was a significant predictor of cognitive reflection, even after controlling for the effects of general mathematical knowledge (in Experiment 1), school mathematical achievement (in Experiment 2) and test anxiety (in Experiments 1–3). Furthermore, Experiment 3 showed that mathematical anxiety and burdening working memory resources with a secondary task had similar effects on cognitive reflection.

Conclusions

Given earlier findings that showed a close link between cognitive reflection, unbiased decisions and rationality, our results suggest that mathematical anxiety might be negatively related to individuals’ ability to make advantageous choices and good decisions.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Morsanyi et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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