Math anxiety and arithmetic learning: Evidence for impaired procedural learning and enhanced retrieval learning.
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: . The present study drew on our understanding of disparate long-term learning and memory systems to provide a framework for how HMA potentially disrupts specific types of math learning. Adult participants completed unfamiliar multiplication trials (e.g., 219 × 4 = ?) in two sessions across consecutive days. Repeated problems enabled retrieval arithmetic learning by repeating the same four problems a total of 72 times each (288 total trials). Unrepeated problems enabled procedural arithmetic learning by repeating a consistent problem structure but without ever repeating a specific problem (288 total trials). HMA subjects (HMAs) showed impaired learning of unrepeated problems suggesting that math anxiety may have disrupted procedural math learning. Conversely, learning of repeated problems was accelerated in HMAs relative to low math anxious subjects, suggesting enhanced retrieval learning. We interpret these results within the context of effort-avoidance and well-established learning and memory systems, suggesting that HMAs enhance effort on declarative memory-mediated retrieval learning possibly at the expense of efficiency gains in procedural memory-mediated learning of computational procedures. This work also suggests that the mechanisms linking math anxiety with math performance may differ in important ways from how math anxiety impacts math learning. Further, this work highlights the potential value of considering how math anxiety interacts with multiple types of math learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001453
Institutions: Georgetown University, University of Virginia
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics and Probability
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: Longitudinal Investigation into Declarative and Procedural Memory Brain Systems Supporting the Development of Math Skills, Collaborative research: Neural and cognitive strengthening of conceptual knowledge and reasoning in classroom-based spatial education, Collaborative Research: Developing neural and behavioral measures to predict long-term STEM learning outcomes from a high-school spatial learning course, G824500614
OpenAlex ID: W4407505231