Math anxiety and arithmetic learning: Evidence for impaired procedural learning and enhanced retrieval learning

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• High math anxiety (HMA) is known to negatively affect math performance.
• Limited research has explored the specific impact of math anxiety on the process of math learning.
• Understanding how math anxiety influences different learning systems is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how high math anxiety (HMA) disrupts specific types of math learning.
• To differentiate the effects of HMA on procedural versus retrieval arithmetic learning.
• To provide a framework for understanding HMA's impact on learning and memory systems in mathematics.

Main Methods:

• Adult participants completed unfamiliar multiplication trials over two consecutive days.
• Retrieval arithmetic learning was assessed using repeated problems (72 times each).
• Procedural arithmetic learning was assessed using unrepeated problems with consistent structures.

Main Results:

• Participants with high math anxiety (HMAs) demonstrated impaired learning of unrepeated problems, indicating disruption in procedural math learning.
• HMAs showed accelerated learning of repeated problems compared to low math-anxious individuals, suggesting enhanced retrieval learning.
• These findings suggest HMA may enhance effort in declarative memory-mediated retrieval learning at the expense of procedural memory-mediated learning.

Conclusions:

• Math anxiety's impact on math learning may differ from its impact on math performance.
• HMA appears to disrupt procedural math learning while potentially enhancing retrieval-based math learning.
• Future research should consider the interaction between math anxiety and multiple learning systems in mathematics.