Colomé Àngels
1 Section of Cognitive Processes, Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
2 Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2019 Mar;72(3):424-435. doi: 10.1177/1747021817752094. Epub 2018 Jan 23.
Larger distance effects in high math-anxious individuals (HMA) performing comparison tasks have previously been interpreted as indicating less precise magnitude representation in this population. A recent study by Dietrich, Huber, Moeller, and Klein limited the effects of math anxiety to symbolic comparison, in which they found larger distance effects for HMA, despite equivalent size effects. However, the question of whether distance effects in symbolic comparison reflect the properties of the magnitude representation or decisional processes is currently under debate. This study was designed to further explore the relation between math anxiety and magnitude representation through three different tasks. HMA and low math-anxious individuals (LMA) performed a non-symbolic comparison, in which no group differences were found. Furthermore, we did not replicate previous findings in an Arabic digit comparison, in which HMA individuals showed equivalent distance effects to their LMA peers. Lastly, there were no group differences in a counting Stroop task. Altogether, an explanation of math anxiety differences in terms of less precise magnitude representation is not supported.
此前，在执行比较任务时，高数学焦虑个体（HMA）中出现的更大距离效应被解释为表明该群体中量级表征不够精确。Dietrich、Huber、Moeller和Klein最近的一项研究将数学焦虑的影响限制在符号比较上，他们发现，尽管大小效应相当，但HMA的距离效应更大。然而，符号比较中的距离效应是否反映量级表征的属性或决策过程，目前仍存在争议。本研究旨在通过三项不同任务进一步探究数学焦虑与量级表征之间的关系。HMA和低数学焦虑个体（LMA）进行了一项非符号比较，未发现组间差异。此外，我们在阿拉伯数字比较中未重复先前的研究结果，在该比较中，HMA个体与LMA同伴表现出相同的距离效应。最后，在计数Stroop任务中也没有组间差异。总之，量级表征不够精确这一说法并不能解释数学焦虑的差异。
