https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9031-2176
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ABSTRACT
Background
Research exploring emotional responses to math-related words in individuals with math anxiety (MA) is scarce. Here, we examined MA participants’ subjective emotional processing of math-related cues within Lang’s bioinformational model of emotion to further understand the role of those cues in MA.
Methods
In total, 41 high-MA and 32 low-MA undergraduates rated math-related words, along with neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant words, from the Affective Norms for English Words. The Self-Assessment Manikin was used to calculate valence, arousal, and dominance scores for each word.
Results
The low-MA group rated math-related words as neutral on the three emotional scales, however, the high-MA group rated them lower and higher for valence and dominance than neutral and unpleasant words, respectively. Moreover, math-related words were rated as more and less activating than neutral and unpleasant words, respectively. The two groups significantly differed in scores on the three scales only for the math-related words.
Conclusions
These results provide evidence that individuals with high MA show altered emotional processing of math-related words, experiencing them as moderately aversive and moderately activating. The findings emphasize that the altered emotional processing of words associated with math should be considered a symptom of MA.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the undergraduate students who participated in the study, and Arturo Plaza Sáez for his help with the testing of the participants.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Notes
1 Pleasant word: belleza (beauty); neutral word: lavabo (bathroom); unpleasant word: hospital (hospital); and math-related word: coseno (cosine).
2 A set of parallel analyses after excluding 5 male participants (7% of the sample) indicated that the results are largely consistent with those obtained for the entire sample.