Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 20, 2026

The Successive Alleys Test of Anxiety in Mice and Rats
Published on: June 17, 2013
The relation of spatial skills, spatial memory span, and two anxiety types with statistics anxiety in European and
Rose-Marie Gibeau1, Sébastien Béland2, Erin A Maloney1
1École de Psychologie, Université d'Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Background & Aims:
The present two studies investigated the role of spatial cognition in statistics anxiety. The hypothesis that spatial representations and/or visuospatial skills are related to the acquisition of statistics abilities which, when lacking or unused, generate statistics anxiety is examined.
Materials & Methods:
To this end, a total of 680 students in Social Sciences from 14 different universities located in one of three countries enrolled in a statistics class at the time of the study were recruited. Study 1 examined a mediation model where visuospatial and verbal working memory (WM) spans as well as spatial anxiety are predictors of statistics anxiety with mathematics anxiety as the mediator.
Results:
The results show a partial mediation and strong associations between all three types of anxiety (i.e., spatial anxiety, mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety). The subscale statistics interpretation anxiety was best predicted by visuospatial WM span. Study 2 examined a path regression model where performance on a spatial and a verbal task along with spatial anxiety are predictors of statistics anxiety.
Discussion:
The results indicate that the mental manipulation subscale of spatial skills is a strong predictor of mental manipulation anxiety which, in turn, predicts interpretation anxiety in statistics.
Conclusion:
Both studies support the role of spatial cognition in statistics understanding. These results have implications for the teaching and learning of statistics.
Related Concept Videos
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety: Overview
Individuals with anxiety often experience a range of physical and emotional symptoms, including sweating, trembling, tachycardia, and disturbances in sleep patterns. These symptoms vary in intensity and frequency but are generally disruptive and distressing.
Social Anxiety Disorder
Theory of Romantic Attachment in Adulthood
Panic Disorder
One-Way ANOVA: Equal Sample Sizes
Different sample means can result in different values for the variance estimate: variance between samples. This is because the variance between samples is calculated as the product of the sample size and the variance between the...

