Worrying Thoughts Limit Working Memory Capacity in Math Anxiety

Sixty-one high-math-anxious persons and sixty-one low-math-anxious persons completed a modified working memory capacity task, designed to measure working memory capacity under a dysfunctional math-related context and working memory capacity under a valence-neutral context. Participants were required to perform simple tasks with emotionally benign material (i.e., lists of letters) over short intervals while simultaneously reading and making judgments about sentences describing dysfunctional math-related thoughts or sentences describing emotionally-neutral facts about the world. Working memory capacity for letters under the dysfunctional math-related context, relative to working memory capacity performance under the valence-neutral context, was poorer overall in the high-math-anxious group compared with the low-math-anxious group. The findings show a particular difficulty employing working memory in math-related contexts in high-math-anxious participants. Theories that can provide reasonable interpretations for these findings and interventions that can reduce anxiety-induced worrying intrusive thoughts or improve working memory capacity for math anxiety are discussed.

Tags
Data and Resources
To access the resources you must log in

This item has no data

Identity

Description: The Identity category includes attributes that support the identification of the resource.

Field Value
PID https://www.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165644
URL https://figshare.com/articles/Worrying_Thoughts_Limit_Working_Memory_Capacity_in_Math_Anxiety/4126326
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165644
Access Modality

Description: The Access Modality category includes attributes that report the modality of exploitation of the resource.

Field Value
Access Right Open Access
Attribution

Description: Authorships and contributors

Field Value
Author Shi, Zhan
Author Liu, Peiru
Publishing

Description: Attributes about the publishing venue (e.g. journal) and deposit location (e.g. repository)

Field Value
Collected From figshare
Hosted By figshare
Publication Date 2016-01-01
Publisher Figshare
Additional Info
Field Value
Language UNKNOWN
Resource Type Dataset
system:type dataset
Management Info
Field Value
Source https://science-innovation-policy.openaire.eu/search/dataset?datasetId=r37980778c78::34b36538ff78f7ad8b979bebdc576189
Author jsonws_user
Last Updated 27 December 2020, 09:25 (CET)
Created 27 December 2020, 09:25 (CET)