Question: Your work is so interesting! i have never heard of working specifically with those who get very anxious about math. Why math, is there something about math that makes people more anxious compared to other subjects and if so, what is this?

Alex Baxendale answered on 5 Mar 2021:

Hi Abby, Thank you for the kind words! Originally we just ‘stumbled’ in to looking at math anxiety, but there were a number of reasons why it works well for us. I’ll write a long answer and sum it up quickly at the end for you as well.

Long Answer:
Math is a super hard subject, it uses the most mental resources of any subject because it’s so abstract (we can do sums like (4 x 8) + 27= pretty quickly without having to use counters or calculators). The mental resource is called “Working Memory” which is a special type of memory we use to hold information for short periods of time – that voice in your head you hear when you think about things? That’s pretty much working memory (If i ask you to remember the numbers 508456725 then you will probably say it in your head, or maybe see it as a picture in your head?). Importantly Working Memory allows us to manipulate information (we can think of a shape in our head and move it around, we can see two numbers like 4 and 14 and add them together). So basically doing math requires working memory, however evidence suggests that anxiety consumes working memory as well – we struggle to focus on information and get nasty thoughts in our head about how we feel about something, which means we have less working memory to do the actual task (in this case math). We found research that suggests that 92% of Americans experience some form of math anxiety, and 31% of students across America, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia and some Asian countries. This is a LOT of people, math anxiety is SUPER common. So we know that math anxiety is super common, and it causes a reduction in the same resources that we need to actually do the math – which means trouble! In terms of WHY people get anxious it can be for a variety of reasons, mean teachers, bad experiences with math, parents with math anxiety can even teach it to you by accident!

Short version:
Math anxiety is SUPER common, and can be caused by lots of situations like parents, bad teachers and experiences with math. Math is the hardest subject there is because it requires a lot of abstract thinking, and the mental resources we use to work out math are also used up by math anxiety, which is bad news for those anxious people.

I hope this helps you to understand! If you have any more questions I’m more than happy to answer! 🙂