Testing the specificity of links between anxiety and performance within mathematics and spatial reasoning

Anxiety within the domains of math and spatial reasoning have consistently been shown to predict performance within those domains. However, little work has focused on how specific these associations are. Across two studies, we systematically tested the degree of specificity in relations between anxiety and performance within math and spatial reasoning. Results consistently showed that anxiety within a cognitive domain predicted performance in that domain even when controlling for other forms of anxiety, providing evidence that cognition-specific anxieties are valuable for understanding cognition-specific performance. We also found that general trait anxiety did not explain a significant portion the anxiety-performance link in either math or spatial reasoning, suggesting that these anxiety-performance associations are not due to the propensity to feel anxious generally. Interestingly, while spatial anxiety did not explain any of the anxiety-performance association in math, math anxiety did explain a significant portion of the anxiety-performance link in spatial reasoning. These results suggest that, while links between anxiety and performance cannot be reduced to a single underlying general anxiety construct, there may nevertheless be overlap between domain anxieties. We end by calling for a more detailed examination of the unique and shared mechanisms linking anxiety and performance across disparate cognitive domains.