This analysis reveals cognitive factors affecting mathematics performance in upper elementary students, indicating emotional strategies may complicate anxiety outcomes.
This study examined the role of domain-specific working memory and emotion regulation in the relation between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance among 264 upper elementary students (Grades 3-5). Participants completed measures of mathematics testing and learning anxiety, verbal and numerical working memory, cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, general anxiety, mathematics self-efficacy, and calculation. Results showed that verbal working memory, but not numerical working memory, mediated the relation between mathematics testing anxiety and calculation. Higher verbal working memory exacerbated the negative effects of both mathematics testing and learning anxiety on calculation. Higher cognitive reappraisal exacerbated the negative effects of mathematics testing anxiety on calculation. These findings suggest that mathematics anxiety hinders calculation not by disrupting numerical processing but through verbal rumination and verbal information processing, especially in children with strong verbal working memory. For children who are still developing emotion regulation and foundational mathematics, cognitive reappraisal, a typically adaptive emotion regulation strategy, may paradoxically increase cognitive load, intensifying the adverse effects of mathematics anxiety during testing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
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Peng et al. (2025) studied this question.
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