The interplay of natural number bias and mathematics state anxiety: evidence from two replication studies

Abstract The present research examined the relationship between natural number bias and mathematics state anxiety in two studies with fifth- and sixth-grade students from Belgium and Greece. Previous research by Halme et al. (2024) found that low-performing Finnish students who exhibited systematic natural number bias in fraction arithmetic reported lower state anxiety than low-performing peers who showed no evidence of natural number bias reasoning. Since this was the first study to demonstrate this relationship, the present research aimed to replicate and extend the finding to additional mathematical domains, such as fraction and decimal ordering. Similar methodology was used in two independent samples: 413 fifth-grade students from Belgium in Study 1 and 418 fifth- and sixth-grade students from Greece in Study 2. Participants completed paper-and-pencil tasks, and state anxiety was assessed using a single-item self-report measure after each task. The findings provided partial support for the original result. Significant differences in state anxiety emerged, in some, but not all, rational-number task contexts, between students classified as exhibiting a strong natural number bias profile and those classified as low performers without evidence of natural number bias reasoning. These results suggest that natural number bias-related response profiles may be associated with different levels of self-reported state anxiety, although the mechanisms underlying this relation remain unclear. Overall, this research improves our understanding of the relationship between conceptual biases and emotional responses in mathematics learning and emphasizes the importance of addressing both in mathematics education.