2 History of maths anxiety
Mary Gough was one of the first academics to write about maths anxiety when in 1954 she considered why so many of her students failed her mathematics classes. She called it ‘Mathemaphobia’ and highlighted how negative experiences in early education could lead to a fear of mathematics (Gough, 1954). A couple of years later, Dreger and Aiken (1957) defined ‘Number Anxiety’, which appeared to be a separate form of general anxiety, which manifested itself in people with a general intelligence, but lower mathematical grades.
By the 1970s the term was more commonly widened to ‘maths anxiety’, encompassing the fact that it related to more than just numbers. Since it was first identified, many researchers have examined and defined maths anxiety and developed ways in which to measure it. The first measurement scale, called the maths anxiety rating scale (MARS), was introduced in 1972 by Richardson and Suinn, who also defined maths anxiety as:
feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations.
There have been other measurement scales. The list of statements in the previous section was based on a scale defined by Betz in 1978.
Definitions of maths anxiety have also linked closely with its symptoms. For example, Krantz defines it as:
an inability by an otherwise intelligent person to cope with quantification, and more generally, mathematics. Frequently the outward symptoms of math anxiety are physiological rather than psychological. When confronted with a math problem, the sufferer has sweaty palms, is nauseous, has heart palpitations, and experiences paralysis of thought.
Ashcroft and Krause (2007) show how when someone working on maths becomes anxious it drains their working memory capacity, making it harder to complete the task.
While maths anxiety manifests itself in physical symptoms, it might not come as a surprise to learn that there is evidence for altered brain activity underpinning maths anxiety. For example, areas of the brain associated with pain and negative emotions have been shown to display greater activity in people with high levels of maths anxiety compared to people with low levels of maths anxiety (Klados et al., 2019).