Mathematical anxiety is associated with reduced visuospatial working memory: the impact of emotional and spatial distracting information

Abstract The attentional control theory posits that anxiety may shift attention towards threatening stimuli and/or affect general attentional control mechanisms. The spatial theory suggests that mathematical anxiety (MA) originates from weakness in spatial processing mechanisms such as visuospatial working memory. Accordingly, MA may negatively influence (1) attentional mechanisms in anxious states and/or (2) general attentional control or working memory mechanisms. The current study examined the associations between MA, attention mechanisms, and working memory. To this end, we validated a new set of math-related pictures and used a math-related modified version of a flanker task. Two groups of college students with low ( N = 35) and high ( N = 31) MA were asked to perform a central task and ignore math-related and neutral distracting pictures. After we controlled for general anxiety, participants with high MA exhibited a larger location congruency effect in the modified flanker task. Moreover, visuospatial short-term and working memory fully mediated the relationship between MA and performances. These results suggest that general visuospatial deficits constitute the main difficulty among individuals with MA. Taken together, the findings shed light on the unique difficulty of individuals with HMA ignoring distraction, and suggest that reduced visuospatial abilities are at the basis of this difficulty. These findings are discussed in the context of their theoretical and treatment-related potential implications.