Learning Disabilities, the Seymour Fox School of Education, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jul 16;8(1):10744. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-27763-w.
Participants with mathematical anxiety (MA) tend to show particular difficulty in mathematical operations with high working memory (WM) demands compared to operations with lower WM demands. Accordingly, we examined strategy selection to test the cognitive mechanism underlying the observed weakness of high MA participants in mathematical operations with high WM demands. We compared two groups of college students with high or low MA, in the solution of simple non-carry addition problems (e.g., 54 + 63) and complex carryover addition problems (e.g., 59 + 63). The results indicated that high MA participants showed particular difficulty in the harder carry condition. Testing the strategy selection mechanism among high MA participants, we found in the carry condition 1) they used the common strategy less often compared to low MA participants and 2) employed unusual strategies more often compared to low MA participants. Therefore, high MA participants were less efficient in their strategy selection, which may be due to weaker spatial representations, numerical difficulties, or less experience solving complex problems. These primitive representations are not adaptive, and can negatively impact performance in math tasks with high WM demands.
参与者具有数学焦虑（MA）倾向于在具有高工作记忆（WM）需求的数学运算中表现出特别的困难，而在具有较低 WM 需求的运算中则表现出较低的困难。因此，我们考察了策略选择，以检验高 MA 参与者在具有高 WM 需求的数学运算中观察到的弱点的认知机制。我们比较了两组具有高或低 MA 的大学生，在解决简单无进位加法问题（例如，54 + 63）和复杂进位加法问题（例如，59 + 63）。结果表明，高 MA 参与者在更难的进位条件下表现出特别的困难。在高 MA 参与者中测试策略选择机制时，我们发现，在进位条件下，1）他们比低 MA 参与者更不经常使用常见策略，2）比低 MA 参与者更经常使用不常见策略。因此，高 MA 参与者在策略选择上效率较低，这可能是由于空间表示较弱、数值困难或解决复杂问题的经验较少。这些原始表示是不适应的，会对具有高 WM 需求的数学任务的表现产生负面影响。
