First-year students’ math anxiety predicts STEM avoidance and underperformance throughout university, independently of math ability

Math anxiety is widely considered a potential barrier to success in STEM. Current thinking holds that math anxiety is directly linked to avoidance of and underperformance in STEM domains. However, past evidence supporting these claims is limited in important ways. Perhaps most crucially, it is possible that math anxiety predicts STEM outcomes merely as a proxy for poor math skills. Here, we tested the link between math anxiety and subsequent STEM outcomes by measuring math anxiety, math ability, and several covariates in 183 first-semester university students. We then tracked students’ STEM avoidance and achievement through four years at university via official academic transcripts. Results showed that math anxiety predicted both a reduction in how many STEM courses students took and, separately (i.e., controlling for one another), lower STEM grades. Crucially, these associations held after controlling for math ability (and other covariates). That math anxiety predicts math-related academic achievement independently of Math Ability suggests that, contrary to current thinking, math anxiety’s effects on academic performance likely operate via mechanisms other than negatively affecting math ability. Beyond this, we show evidence that math anxiety can account for associations between math ability and STEM outcomes, suggesting that past links between math ability and real-world outcomes may, in fact, be at least partially explainable by attitudes toward math. These findings provide clear impetus for developing and testing interventions that target math anxiety specifically and suggest that focusing on math ability without additional attention to math anxiety may fail to optimally boost STEM outcomes.

Attitudes Toward Math Are Differentially Related to the Neural Basis of Multiplication Depending on Math Skill

Attitudes toward math (ATM) predict math achievement. Negative ATM are associated with avoidance of math content, while positive ATM are associated with exerting more effort on math tasks. Recent literature highlights the importance of considering interactions between ATM and math skill in examining relations to achievement. This study investigated, for the first time, the effects of the interaction between math skill and ATM on the neurocognitive basis of arithmetic processing. We examined the effect of this interaction using a single-digit multiplication task in 9- to 12-year-old children. Results showed that higher math skill was correlated with less activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and positive ATM were correlated with less activation in the left IFG. The relation between ATM and the neural basis of multiplication varied depending on math skill. Only among children with lower math skill, positive ATM were associated with greater activation of the left IFG. The results suggest that positive ATM in low-skill children might encourage them to more fully engage the neurocognitive systems underlying controlled effort and retrieval of multiplication facts. Our results highlight the importance of examining the role of both attitudinal and cognitive factors on the neural basis of arithmetic development.

Do Biology Students Really Hate Math? Empirical Insights into Undergraduate Life Science Majors’ Emotions about Mathematics

Undergraduate life science majors are reputed to have negative emotions toward mathematics, yet little empirical evidence supports this. We sought to compare emotions of majors in the life sciences versus other natural sciences and math. We adapted the Attitudes toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory to create an Attitudes toward the Subject of Mathematics Inventory (ASMI). We collected data from 359 science and math majors at two research universities and conducted a series of statistical tests that indicated that four AMSI items comprised a reasonable measure of students’ emotional satisfaction with math. We then compared life science and non–life science majors and found that major had a small to moderate relationship with students’ responses. Gender also had a small relationship with students’ responses, while students’ race, ethnicity, and year in school had no observable relationship. Using latent profile analysis, we identified three groups—students who were emotionally satisfied with math, emotionally dissatisfied with math, and neutral. These results and the emotional satisfaction with math scale should be useful for identifying differences in other undergraduate populations, determining the malleability of undergraduates’ emotional satisfaction with math, and testing effects of interventions aimed at improving life science majors’ attitudes toward math.