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Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals

This study aimed to investigate whether the ordinal judgments of high math-anxious (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals differ. Two groups of 20 participants with extreme scores on the Shortened Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (sMARS) had to decide whether a triplet of numbers was presented...

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Autores principales: Colomé, Àngels, Núñez-Peña, Maria Isabel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8096927/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33967874
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.566614
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author Colomé, Àngels
Núñez-Peña, Maria Isabel
author_facet Colomé, Àngels
Núñez-Peña, Maria Isabel
author_sort Colomé, Àngels
collection PubMed
description This study aimed to investigate whether the ordinal judgments of high math-anxious (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals differ. Two groups of 20 participants with extreme scores on the Shortened Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (sMARS) had to decide whether a triplet of numbers was presented in ascending order. Triplets could contain one-digit or two-digit numbers and be formed by consecutive numbers (counting condition), numbers with a constant distance of two or three (balanced) or numbers with variable distances between them (neutral). All these triplets were also presented unordered: sequence order in these trials could be broken at the second (D2) or third (D3) number. A reverse distance effect (worse performance for ordered balanced than for counting trials) of equal size was found in both anxiety groups. However, HMA participants made more judgment errors than their LMA peers when they judged one-digit counting ordered triplets. This effect was related to worse performance of HMA individuals on a symmetry span test and might be related to group differences on working memory. Importantly, HMAs were less accurate than LMA participants at rejecting unordered D2 sequences. This result is interpreted in terms of worse cognitive flexibility in HMA individuals.
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spelling pubmed-80969272021-05-06 Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals Colomé, Àngels Núñez-Peña, Maria Isabel Front Psychol Psychology This study aimed to investigate whether the ordinal judgments of high math-anxious (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals differ. Two groups of 20 participants with extreme scores on the Shortened Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (sMARS) had to decide whether a triplet of numbers was presented in ascending order. Triplets could contain one-digit or two-digit numbers and be formed by consecutive numbers (counting condition), numbers with a constant distance of two or three (balanced) or numbers with variable distances between them (neutral). All these triplets were also presented unordered: sequence order in these trials could be broken at the second (D2) or third (D3) number. A reverse distance effect (worse performance for ordered balanced than for counting trials) of equal size was found in both anxiety groups. However, HMA participants made more judgment errors than their LMA peers when they judged one-digit counting ordered triplets. This effect was related to worse performance of HMA individuals on a symmetry span test and might be related to group differences on working memory. Importantly, HMAs were less accurate than LMA participants at rejecting unordered D2 sequences. This result is interpreted in terms of worse cognitive flexibility in HMA individuals. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-04-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8096927/ /pubmed/33967874 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.566614 Text en Copyright © 2021 Colomé and Núñez-Peña. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Colomé, Àngels
Núñez-Peña, Maria Isabel
Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals
title Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals
title_full Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals
title_fullStr Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals
title_full_unstemmed Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals
title_short Processing of Ordinal Information in Math-Anxious Individuals
title_sort processing of ordinal information in math-anxious individuals
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8096927/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33967874
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.566614
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