Math anxiety and deficient executive control: does reappraisal modulate this link?

"Think of the situation in a positive light": A look at cognitive reappraisal, affective reactivity and health☆

RATIONALE

How individuals regulate their emotions is critical for maintaining health and well-being. For example, reframing a stressful situation in a positive light, a form of cognitive reappraisal, is beneficial for both physical and mental health as well as subjective well-being. However, it is currently unclear why this relationship exists. One potential mechanism could be how one emotionally reacts to stressors in daily life, termed affective reactivity.

OBJECTIVE

The current study examined longitudinal associations that spanned 20 years between cognitive reappraisal and health outcomes and subjective well-being and if affective reactivity mediated this relationship.

METHODS

Participants completed waves 1-3 of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Survey series and were asked various questions about their general health and well-being. Each wave was approximately 10 years apart. A subset of participants from MIDUS II completed the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE II), an 8-day daily diary asking about their everyday experiences. The final sample consisted of 1814 participants.

RESULTS

Results found that cognitive reappraisal was significantly associated with future health and well-being outcomes, and negative affective reactivity significantly mediated this relationship. Those who engaged more in cognitive reappraisal tended to be less affectively reactive to stressful events 10 years later, leading to having better health and well-being outcomes 20 years later.

CONCLUSION

Findings from this study could better inform stress and well-being interventions by strengthening cognitive reappraisal strategies to target reducing affective reactivity to stressors which should then benefit long-term health and well-being.

Multidimensional components of (state) mathematics anxiety: Behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and psychophysiological consequences

The present study aimed to analyze the different components of state mathematics anxiety that students experienced while solving calculation problems by manipulating their stress levels. A computerized mathematical task was administered to 165 fifth-graders randomly assigned to three different groups: positive, negative, and control conditions, in which positive, negative, or no feedback during the task was given, respectively. Behavioral (task performance), emotional (negative feelings), cognitive (worrisome thoughts and perceived competence), and psychophysiological responses (skin conductance and vagal withdrawal) were analyzed. Behavioral responses did not differ in the positive and negative conditions, while the latter was associated with children's reportedly negative emotional states, worries, and perceived lack of competence. The stress induced in the negative condition led to an increase in skin conductance and cardiac vagal withdrawal in children. Our data suggest the importance of considering students' interpretation of mathematics-related experiences, which might affect their emotional, cognitive, and psychophysiological responses.

How are different math knowledge presentations associated with math anxiety?

A close relationship between math performance and math anxiety has been demonstrated, but how different presentations of mathematics are associated with math anxiety has not been investigated. This study recruited 826 elementary school students in grades 5 and 6. All students were given math trait and state anxiety questionnaires; a nonverbal matrix reasoning task; and verbalized, symbolic, and situational fraction problem-solving tasks. After data cleaning, 475 boys and 323 girls (798 in total) were included in the analysis (mean age = 11.79, SD = 0.82). Partial correlation analysis showed that students' math traits and state anxiety were more closely related to symbolic fraction problem-solving than to verbalized and situational fraction problem-solving. Mixed linear model analysis showed that math state anxiety for symbolic problem-solving was significantly greater than that for verbalized and situational problem-solving. Based on these findings, we concluded that the presentation of symbolic math is more likely to induce math anxiety than verbalized or situational math. This finding has potential practical applications in math anxiety interventions and education.