Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 3, 2025
10:58
Multimedia Battery for Assessment of Cognitive and Basic Skills in Mathematics BM-PROMA
Published on: August 28, 2021
4.6K
Math anxiety and the shifting function: An event-related potential study of arithmetic task switching
Belén González-Gómez1,2, M Isabel Núñez-Peña1,2,3, Àngels Colomé2,4
1Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology (Quantitative Psychology Section), Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
The European Journal of Neuroscience
|April 10, 2023
Summary
Math anxiety impairs attentional control, making individuals slower to switch between arithmetic tasks. Highly anxious individuals exhibit greater difficulty and longer processing times when shifting focus between operations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Educational psychology
Background:
- Math anxiety is linked to inefficient cognitive processing.
- Attentional control theory posits anxiety reduces attentional control, impacting executive functions like inhibition and shifting.
- Previous research suggests math anxiety may impair inhibitory function.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between math anxiety and the efficiency of shifting cognitive sets between addition and subtraction tasks.
- To examine how math anxiety affects response times and electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns during task switching.
Main Methods:
- An event-related potential (ERP) transition-cueing experiment was conducted.
- Participants included 20 individuals with high math anxiety and 20 with low math anxiety.
- Behavioral (response time, switch cost) and neural (ERP) data were collected during arithmetic task switching.
Main Results:
- Highly math-anxious individuals demonstrated significantly larger switch costs in response time compared to low math-anxious individuals.
- A cue-locked, centroparietal positivity associated with task switching was observed only in the low math-anxious group.
- Highly math-anxious individuals showed altered frontal P2 activity when anticipating subtraction, suggesting heightened attentional capture.
Conclusions:
- Math anxiety impairs attentional control, specifically the ability to efficiently shift between arithmetic operations.
- Individuals with high math anxiety experience delays in task set shifting and exhibit distinct neural responses to task cues.
- These findings contribute to understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying math anxiety and its impact on mathematical processing.
