Psychological Development and Education ›› 2011, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (2): 118-125.

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The Mechanism of the Effect of Mathematics Anxiety on Children’s Math Performance

CUI Ji-fang, LI Nen-xiao, CHEN Ying-he   

  1. Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875
  • Online:2011-03-15 Published:2011-03-15

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Abstract: This study designed two math tasks,the mental arithmetic of addition and the figure rotation/translation,and used the Mathematical Anxiety Scale for Children,two working memory tasks,and an inhibition task to explore the mechanism of effect of mathematics anxiety on children's math performance.Two hundred and thirteen children of 5th grade participated in this study,and 89 children were included in the formal experiments.The results showed:(1) there was a significant negative correlation between mathematics anxiety and the children's math academic performance;(2)the high mathematics anxiety group did significantly worse than the low mathematics anxiety group in the performance of two working memory tasks and two math tasks,but there was no significant difference in the inhibition task;(3) the verbal working memory and spatial working memory were mediating factors of mathematics anxiety and the performance of mental arithmetic of addition,however,only the spatial working memory was the mediating factor of mathematics anxiety and the performance of figure rotation/translation,and the verbal working memory was the moderating factor.The results supported the processing efficiency theory.

Key words: mathematics anxiety, working memory, processing efficiency theory, inhibition theory

CLC Number: 

  • B844.1
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