Poster #3 - Anxiety and Children’s Mathematics Academic Performance: The Role of Executive Functions

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Higher levels of executive functioning have been found to predict better academic performance, and this link has been particularly evident for mathematics. In contrast, high levels of trait anxiety have been linked to children’s academic underachievement. Based on the Attentional Control Theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007) according to which anxiety disrupts attentional control, an essential function of the central component of executive functioning, the current research set out to investigate whether associations between anxiety and mathematics academic underachievement were mediated via children’s poor executive functions performance (working memory, inhibition, and shifting). Children aged between 9 and 11 years were evaluated using: a self-report measure of trait anxiety (Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale), their school academic data, as well as executive functions tasks: a complex reading-operation working memory span task (Study 1, N = 66; 39 girls), and a Stroop-like cognitive inhibition task and a task-switching probe taken from the NEPSY II battery (Korkman, Kirk, & Kemp, 2007) (Study 2, N = 52; 29 girls). First, results from a mediation analysis (Study 1) indicated that high trait anxiety was indirectly associated with children’s poor math academic performance through its relationship with poor working memory span. Moreover, the analysis revealed that trait anxiety did not directly influence children’s math attainment after taking into account their working memory performance. Second, using a parallel mediation employed for investigating the potential mediator roles of inhibition and shifting (Study 2), we found that poorer inhibition was the only significant mediator of the relationship between children’s high trait anxiety and their poor mathematics attainment. However, the analysis revealed that children’s math academic performance was influenced by their trait anxiety levels even after taking into account their cognitive inhibition performance. Taken together, findings from the current research suggest that while children’s poor mathematics school attainment is influenced by both poorer executive functioning skills and greater levels of trait anxiety, children with higher levels of trait anxiety are susceptible to poorer math performance mostly via anxiety’s effect on children’s working memory, and - in part - via its effect on their cognitive inhibitory control. Thus, findings suggest that working memory and cognitive inhibition represent specific mechanisms accounting for anxiety's detrimental effect on math academic achievement, which could be considered in educational interventions children with higher levels of anxiety. Aside from improving cognition and school performance, such interventions could provide high-anxious children with a more efficient buffer against anxiety’s detrimental effects on academic achievement.

Authors

• Lavinia Cheie, Babeș-Bolyai University
  Presenting Author

• Laura Visu-Petra, Babeș-Bolyai University
  Non-Presenting Author