Math anxiety and attention: Biased orienting to math symbols or less efficient attentional control?

Abstract

Previous research about the existence of an attentional bias for math in highly math anxious (HMA) individuals shows inconsistent results, and methodologies used so far cannot distinguish the various components of attentional bias. Here we adapted Grafton and MacLeod (2014)’s methodology to assess biases linked to math anxiety in engagement and disengagement when task-irrelevant math and neutral symbols are briefly presented. Twenty-one HMA and 21 low math-anxious individuals were asked to perform the attentional task just after solving an arithmetic task expected to generate group differences in state anxiety. Considering attentional control theory, state anxiety will likely increase allocation of attention to task-irrelevant stimuli. Therefore, individual differences in efficiency responding to this task, which despite being simple and non-mathematical is interrupted by task-irrelevant stimuli, were also analyzed to study whether HMA individuals show reduced attentional control. Our results provide evidence against the presence of an attentional bias towards/against mathematical symbols in visuospatial orienting of the HMA population, neither in the form of an engagement bias nor as a disengagement bias. Rather, HMA individuals were slower and could not take advantage of a longer interval to overcome distraction, which suggest less efficient attentional control, at least when they experience higher state anxiety. Therefore, it is unlikely that an attentional bias for math may originate or aggravate math anxiety. However, reduced attentional control may underlie the less efficient processing on math tasks usually shown by HMA individuals, so research on attention in math anxiety should keep focusing on HMA’s difficulties in executive control.