Poster #78 - Predicting maths anxiety from mathematical achievement across the transition from primary- to secondary-education

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Math anxiety describes feelings of stress, fear and tension when engaging in math (Beilock & Maloney, 2015); It is characterized by the same avoidance, physiological arousal and subjective feelings of fear (Maloney, 2016; Maloney, Sattizahn, & Beilock, 2014) associated with diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders (Silverman & Field, 2011). Math anxiety not only hinders achievement in mathematics (Ashcraft, 2002; Maloney & Beilock, 2012) and related fields - it is a key barrier to learning statistics (Field, 2010, 2014) - it is associated with lower earning potential, impaired financial planning, poor self-efficacy in teachers, and poorer drug calculations in nurses (Maloney, 2016).
Theories of maths anxiety suggest three plausible relationships between maths anxiety and worse mathematical performance: (1) maths anxiety leads to worse mathematical achievement; (2) poor mathematical achievement leads to maths anxiety; or (3) the relationship is reciprocal (Carey, Hill, Devine, & Szücs, 2016). The primary- to secondary-education transition in the UK (age 11-12) is a substantive life event for many children; it is a time at which the trajectories of both emotional health and academic achievement can be affected (Evans, Borriello, & Field, 2018). The aim of the current study is to look at whether the trajectory of mathematical attainment across this transition predicts later maths anxiety.
A secondary analysis of data from the Twin Early Development Study (TEDS) was performed. This longitudinal study consists of over 16,000 twin pairs born in England and Wales between 1994 and 1996 that are representative of the UK population (Haworth, Davis, & Plomin, 2013). The statistical models were fit on the participants (one from each twin pair) for which there was data on mathematical performance across the primary- to secondary-education transition (i.e., at ages 9, 10 and 12 years) and maths anxiety at age 18. In phase 1, a multilevel growth model was fit predicting mathematical achievement from time (age from 9 years: 0, 1, 3 years) with slopes and intercepts. The intercept and slope for each child were extracted to be used as predictors in the model of maths anxiety. In phase 2 a linear model was fit predicting anxiety from child sex, socio-economic status, emotional health (measured by the strengths and difficulties questionnaire,SDQ, at ages 9 and 12), average verbal cognitive ability at 10-12 years, the intercept and slope of maths achievement from 9 to 12 years, and the interactions between each predictor and the slope of maths achievement. Due to heteroscedastic residuals, HC4 robust standard errors were computed using the the robust() function from the sjstats package (Lüdecke, 2017) in R
3.5.1 (R Core Team, 2018).
The results showed that maths anxiety was significantly predicted by child sex, emotional health pre-transition to secondary education, the intercept for mathematical achievement (i.e., maths achievement at age 9) and the interaction between emotional health pre-transition and the slope of maths achievement over the primary-to secondary education transition (Table 1). The interaction suggests that children with high SDQ scores pre-transition and a subsequent low rate of change in mathematical achievement across the transition have the highest maths anxiety at age 18 (Figure 1).

Authors

• Andy P Field, University of Sussex
  Presenting Author

• Tomasz Bloniewski, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Danielle Evans, University of Sussex
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yulia Kovas, Goldsmiths, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author