Math anxiety has neurological basis. (Apparently, it makes you anxious.) A comparison of three articles.

I was going to review some articles about the “Caregiving Impulse” study, a week following the NIH press release, but strangely, it’s been picked up by very few sources so far, so I’m going to hold off for another few days to see what happens. In the meanwhile, there was an intriguing brain imaging study posted this weekend about math anxiety – quite popular already. Here are three versions.

 

First: Brains of Kids With Math Anxiety Function Differently, Says Study, ABC News Medical Unit

1) Who did the research?

Vinod Menon and others from the Stanford University School of Medicine. No mention of where the study was published. No link to the abstract either. I found it myself here.

Citation score: 0. No journal, no points.

 

2) What did they do?

They “recruited about 50 second and third graders,” and gave them a test of math-anxiety, before scanning their brains while the children completed addition and subtraction problems. The researchers compared brain activity in children with high math anxiety versus low math anxiety. It would help to know what this means, exactly. What qualifies as math anxiety?

Methods score: 1/2. Since they’re comparing children with high and low math anxiety, I really would need to know what this means to interpret the results.

 

3) What did they find?

“They found that children with a high level of math anxiety were slower at solving problems and were less accurate than children with lower math anxiety.” A researcher describes the brain scans: “Children who said they had math anxiety had greater responses in the areas of the brain implicated in processing negative emotions like fear” and “reduced activity in areas normally associated with mathematical problem solving.” I’m assuming this is again compared to children with low math anxiety, but this part of the article does not specify. Also, what was the control or baseline condition in this study? Were there non-math problems used to find the math-specific areas of the brain in the scans? Did researchers just directly compare the two groups?

Results score: 1. I understand the conclusions of the study. Although the article doesn’t describe exactly what researchers were comparing in the brain scans  it does a good job of this when describing the results of the math tests, and I’m assuming this comparison applies to the scans as well.

 

4) What does it mean?

The article starts off by saying that, “Kids who get the jitters before a math test may actually have different brain functions than kids without math anxiety.” But this study doesn’t show any different brain functions in children with high math anxiety. It just shows that these children are demonstrating normal fear responses, but specifically in response to math problems. The researcher who is quoted describes this better, saying that the results show that math-anxiety is “it is very real and very stimulus-specific.”

Beyond just proving that people who say they are scared of math aren’t just faking it, the article describes the use of the results to diagnose or potentially develop treatments for this type of anxiety. It also mentions that math-anxiety can affect people’s lives by causing them to avoid math classes, limiting their career options.

I was very curious about the link between math anxiety and the activity in problem-solving areas of the brain, but this was not discussed.

There were no limitations of the study mentioned in the article. For example, the fact that only one age group participated in the study, or that only 50 children were involved, or that we don’t know if these children actively avoided math, as the article suggests. The implications of saying that math anxiety has a neurological basis are also not discussed (i.e., if you can diagnose it, and it affects learning, is this then a legitimate learning disability?).

Implications score: 1/2. The importance but not the limitations of the research are discussed.

Total score: 2

 

Second, Math anxiety has neurological basis, Psych Central

1) Who did the research?

The author and his affiliation are mentioned, as is the journal where the study was published: Psychological Science. Sadly, not the issue or volume, and no link to the abstract either.

Citation score: 1/2.

 

2) What did they do?

The article states that “Investigators performed a series of brain scans while second- and third-grade students did addition and subtraction” and later says, “Children were assessed for math anxiety while outside the scanner.” …and then “subjects were ranked by their scores and divided into high and low math anxiety groups for comparison.”

This article goes into much more detail about what is involved in a test for math-anxiety: “Tests for math anxiety ask people about their emotional responses to situations and problems involving math. Those with high levels of math anxiety respond to numerical problems with fear and worry, and also say they are anxious about situations such as being asked to solve a math problem in front of a class.”

Methods score: 1. I have a very clear picture of what researchers measured and what they were comparing.

 

3) What did they find?

Children with math anxiety showed “heightened activity” in the amygdala or “fear center” and the hippocampus, which “helps form new memories”, and reduced activity “in several brain regions associated with working memory and numerical reasoning.” This article adds an extra piece of information: “analysis of brain connections showed that, in children with high math anxiety, the increased activity in the fear center influenced a reduced function in numerical information-processing regions of the brain,” but doesn’t explain how researchers measured neural connections, or how they knew that one area influenced another, making it somewhat hard to interpret.

The article also describes how kids did on the math problems: “Children with high math anxiety were less accurate and significantly slower at solving math problems than children with low math anxiety.”

Results score: 1. The results are clearly described (since the groups were well described earlier in the article) and even though some information is confusing and perhaps unnecessary, at least it isn’t misleading or incomplete.

 

4) What does it mean?

The article states: “The results suggest that, in math anxiety, math-specific fear interferes with the brain’s information-processing capacity and its ability to reason through a math problem.”

Again, the implications of the results on legitimizing math anxiety as a “real thing” are discussed, along with the potential development of treatments, such as those used for “generalized anxiety or phobias.”

But I still take issue with this statement: “Experts say this is the first study to show how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don’t.” I still don’t think their brain is functioning any differently. Their brains’ responses are different, but their brains are functioning normally.

The implications of having a neurological basis for math anxiety are still not discussed. I think this is a big deal, right? Making this a potentially diagnosable problem?

Implications score: 1/2. Only the importance of the study is discussed, not the limitations.

Total score: 3

 

Last, Math anxiety changes brain function in kids, Education Week

1) Who did the research?

The author, affiliation, and journal are listed, with a link to the abstract. Way to go!

Citation score: 1

 

2) What did they do?

“Menon and his team conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 46 2nd- and 3rd-grade students with low and high math anxiety as they worked on addition and subtraction problems. The kids were subjected to other tests to assess their math anxiety and also standard intelligence and cognitive tests.” There is no description of how math anxiety was defined, however.

Methods score: 1/2.

 

3) What did they find?

The article says that “according to the website” researchers found that children “who feel panicky about doing math had increased activity in brain regions associated with fear, which caused decreased activity in parts of the brain involved in problem-solving.” The article doesn’t describe how researchers came to this conclusion based on what they measured. How do they know that increased activity in one area caused decreased activity in another? Although this seems to be an accurate description of the researcher’s findings, it doesn’t give me enough details to really trust the information in the article.

Results score: 1/2. Only the conclusions are described, not what researchers actually measured.

 

4) What does it mean?

Researchers say they have found “biological evidence of math anxiety,” that validates it as a “genuine type of stimulus- and situation-specific anxiety.” Again the article cites the potential for treatment of this problem (now that we know it’s a “real” problem).

However, again there are no limitations of the study discussed, or future research that must be done to clarify the results. I wonder if this is because the information came mainly from the press release published by Stanford on its website.

Implications score: 1/2

Total score: 2.5

 

Other sources:

Anxiety makes brain poor at math for some children, Medical News Today

The reason why math anxiety is so debilitating, study explains, Imperfect Parent

Study: MRI reveals brain function differs in math-phobic children, Health Imaging

Math anxiety linked with differences in brain functioning, study finds, Huffington Post