Poster #19 - Making Meaning of Mistakes: Error Monitoring as a Mechanism Linking Emotions and Learning in Math

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

The ways people learn and experience emotions are closely tied to each other, but we do not fully understand the mechanisms by which they are tightly coupled. One central candidate mechanism is error monitoring. Error monitoring is the neuropsychological process by which individuals detect and respond to unexpected outcomes, such as errors. Research supporting the potential mechanistic role of error monitoring includes neuroscientific evidence that suggests error monitoring relies upon the functioning of the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region involved in noticing surprising outcomes in the environment and also involved in emotional functioning and physiological arousal.
How people monitor errors and respond to them is dependent on the context in which they are working and the emotional salience of that context. A particularly well-studied example is the anxiety many people experience in math learning (Maloney & Beilock, 2012). Math anxiety undermines math achievement, attitudes about math, and motivation (Durrani & Tariq, 2009). Notably, anxiety itself is context dependent; those with math anxiety may not have anxiety in other contexts.
One of the key behavioral responses to errors is post-error slowing (PES). It has been well-documented that individuals slow down more after an error than they do after a correct response. However, the function of PES has been debated. PES has been attributed to cognitive control mechanisms that facilitate more cautious behavior to improve performance post-error (Botvinick et al., 2001). Conversely, it has been suggested that PES reflects a distraction of attention due to the error, which may lead to worse performance post-error (Notebaert et al., 2009). We propose that PES may reflect the social-emotional processing involved in learning. Potentially, depending on a person’s emotional state in a particular context, the pause after an error is an adaptive opportunity to step back and think, while for others, it may be a maladaptive freeze response in fear of getting a wrong answer.
Given the above, we will examine the relations between patterns of error monitoring and math anxiety across development within the context of math learning. A total 348 participants in 3rd-4th grade, 7-8th grade, and 10th-11th grade (n=116 in each age group) will be recruited. Participants will be tested in school, as described in Table 1.
We predict that youth with lower math anxiety scores will show a stronger positive relationship between PES and post-error improvement in accuracy (PIA), an indicator of learning rather than error preoccupation. We will also explore whether these effects interact with age.
We will run a series of linear multiple regression models with PIA as the outcome variable and PES, math anxiety, age, and their interactions as predictors. In all models, we will control for generalized anxiety to demonstrate the effect is specific to math anxiety, as well as gender and SES.
An understanding of how anxiety in math relates to error monitoring in a math context may provide insight into the ways in which learning and emotions are connected. The findings could have important implications for math learning and social-emotionally informed instruction.

Authors

• Ellyn Pueschel, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Xiao-Fei Yang, University of Southern California

• Santiago Morales, University of Southern California

• Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, University of Southern California