Math anxiety predicts initial acquisition of new math skills over and above math competence and study strategy

Math anxiety is negatively associated with math performance and achievement. However, we do not know much about how math anxiety relates to the acquisition of new math skills. The current study aims to investigate (1) whether math anxiety is negatively associated with the acquisition of new math skills above and beyond baseline math competence and (2) if studying examples versus completing practice problems leads to different outcomes based on individual differences in math anxiety and basic math competence.

Two hundred forty-nine college students were taught a novel mathematical computation and randomly assigned to four different study conditions consisting of varied numbers of worked-out examples and to be solved problems.

We found that individuals with higher math anxiety had lower performance on the novel math task than their less anxious counterparts, above and beyond their basic math competence.

Post-hoc mediation analysis suggests that math competence partially mediates the relationship between math anxiety and performance on the novel math task. The current study did not find compelling evidence to suggest differences between study strategies on acquisition of new math skills.