Departamento de Psicología y Sociología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, Universidad de Zaragoza, Teruel, Spain.
Departamento de Psicología Básica y Metodología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain.
PLoS One. 2021 Aug 5;16(8):e0255777. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255777. eCollection 2021.
Math anxiety (MA) affects students of all age groups. Because of its effects on children's academic development, the need to recognize its early manifestations has been highlighted. We designed a European-Spanish version of the Scale for Early Mathematics Anxiety (SEMA; Wu et al. (2012)), and assessed its psychometric properties in a sample of children aged 7 to 12 years. The participants (967 typically developing children) were elementary school students recruited from ten schools. Children reported their general and math anxiety levels in an individual session and performed nonverbal IQ and math abilities subtests in a group session. Teachers reported the final math grades. The psychometric indices obtained, and the resulting factor structure revealed that the European-Spanish version of the SEMA developed in this study is a reliable and valid measure to evaluate MA in children from 3rd to 6th grade. Moreover, we explored gender differences, that resulted in small effect sizes, which disappeared when controlling for trait anxiety. Differences across grades were found for both global MA and the numerical processing anxiety factor but not for the situational and performance anxiety factor. Finally, MA was negatively associated with students' math achievement, although the strength of the associations varied with the MA measure selected, the kind of math achievement analyzed, and the school stage considered. Our findings highlight the relevance of MA in elementary school and highlight the need for an early identification of students at risk of suffering MA to palliate the negative consequences of MA in children's cognitive and academic development.
数学焦虑（MA）影响所有年龄段的学生。由于其对儿童学业发展的影响，人们已经强调需要识别其早期表现。我们设计了一种欧洲-西班牙语版的早期数学焦虑量表（SEMA；Wu 等人，2012 年），并在一个 7 至 12 岁儿童样本中评估了其心理测量学特性。参与者（967 名典型发展的儿童）是从十所学校招募的小学生。儿童在个别会议上报告他们的一般和数学焦虑水平，并在小组会议上进行非言语智商和数学能力子测试。教师报告最终的数学成绩。获得的心理计量学指标和由此产生的因素结构表明，本研究中开发的 SEMA 欧洲-西班牙语版本是一种可靠有效的方法，可用于评估 3 至 6 年级儿童的 MA。此外，我们还探讨了性别差异，结果发现性别差异很小，但在控制特质焦虑时则消失了。在整个年级中，无论是整体 MA 还是数值处理焦虑因素都存在差异，但在情境和表现焦虑因素方面则没有差异。最后，MA 与学生的数学成绩呈负相关，尽管关联的强度因所选的 MA 测量、分析的数学成绩类型以及考虑的学校阶段而异。我们的研究结果强调了 MA 在小学阶段的重要性，并强调需要早期识别有 MA 风险的学生，以减轻 MA 对儿童认知和学业发展的负面影响。
