Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070219/od_nm/math_anxiety_dc
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Worrying about how you'll perform on a math test may actually contribute to a lower test score, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas who studies the problem.
"It turns out that math anxiety occupies a person's working memory," said Ashcroft, who spoke on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Ashcroft said while easy math tasks such as addition require only a small fraction of a person's working memory, harder computations require much more.
Worrying about math takes up a large chunk of a person's working memory stores as well, spelling disaster for the anxious student who is taking a high-stakes test.
Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts," said University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock.
Although test preparation classes can help students overcome this anxiety, they are limited to students whose families can afford them.
Ultimately, she said, "It may not be wise to rely completely on scores to predict who will succeed."
While the causes of math anxiety are unknown, Ashcroft said people who manage to overcome math anxiety have completely normal math proficiency.
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Although I do agree with some parts of their statements - when I get anxious or worry too much over a test, I do worse on it rather than when I chill - I have to wonder, did they conduct this study for the right reasons?
Math scores in the US have been historically lower than countries such as Japan; perhaps this study was a way of explaining why, so as not to make the US look, well, stupid. By citing this study, professionals can now say that math scores are not lower because they don't know the material, but because they are anxious test takers.
What's next, college interviews for majors in engineering going something like "Well I'm actually very good at math, I am just very anxious, which studies prove affects my scores." Are these the type of people we want working at high-level mathematical postions? NASA even?
And come on.. you have to go with the "duh" factor here. Of course harder problems require more complex brain activity! And obviously, if you worry you'll fail, you're more likely to be staring at the clock and thinking about how your parents will KILL you for failing another test rather than really trying.
What do you think? Was it simply an excuse on which to blame low math scores? Will it affect the way educators view math scores? Or was it just a waste of research time?
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Its good to hear bcause I fail miserably at math. :( its jsut really hard for me. Its nice to share the blame with someone else besides myself.
yay now i dont feel like an idiot