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Worrying about Maths just makes it worse
Apr 8, 2005, 04:16, Reviewed by: Dr.
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Participants with high levels of maths anxiety were less accurate and made larger errors on the mathematical tasks. One particularly interesting finding was that these highly anxious participants were also poorer at remembering the serial order of letters, but only when they were performing a concurrent maths task.
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By The British Psychological Society,
People who worry about their ability to do mathematics are hampering their chances of doing well. Worrying about mathematics means that vital psychological resources are used which impacts on an individual's ability to solve arithmetic problems.
These are the findings of Dr Sheila Ford and her team of psychologists at Staffordshire University which are presented at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference at the University of Manchester on Saturday 2 April 2005.
Dr Ford and her colleagues asked 52 participants to complete 180 problems displayed on a computer screen. These problems were a combination of mathematical tasks, letter recall tasks and tasks which required participants to recall letters and do maths simultaneously. Prior to completing the problems each participant completed an inventory which assessed how anxious they felt about completing mathematical tasks.
Participants with high levels of maths anxiety were less accurate and made larger errors on the mathematical tasks. One particularly interesting finding was that these highly anxious participants were also poorer at remembering the serial order of letters, but only when they were performing a concurrent maths task.
Dr Ford said: "It appears that maths anxiety affects performance on arithmetical problems because anxious intrusive thoughts compete for limited memory resources and this may disrupt the calculation processes involved in arithmetic problem solving." 
- Presented at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference
www.bps.org.uk
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