BELEN GONZALEZ-GOMEZ
@ub.edu
FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
Roser Bono, María Isabel Núñez-Peña, Carlos Campos-Rodríguez, Belén González-Gómez, and Vicenç Quera
Elsevier BV
Àngels Colomé, María Isabel Núñez-Peña, and Belén González-Gómez
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
AbstractAttentional control deficit has been proposed as one of the reasons for lower arithmetical performance in people with high math anxiety (HMA). Previous research trying to discern whether this deficit concerned proactive or reactive use of attentional control has been criticised because the methodologies used were mostly suited to investigating reactive control only. The aim of this study was to investigate proactive control in HMA individuals in a classical Stroop task. Twenty HMA and 20 low math-anxious individuals (LMA) named the ink colour in which congruent and incongruent colour words as well as X strings (neutral condition) were presented. The HMA group was slower than their LMA peers in the congruent and incongruent conditions only. Furthermore, HMA individuals showed a higher interference effect. Last, only LMA participants showed a facilitatory effect of the congruent condition. These results are interpreted as indicating the presence in the HMA individuals of a task conflict between the task to perform (ink naming) and an irrelevant task triggered by the stimuli (word reading). Task conflict is evident only when proactive control, responsible for maintaining the current goals, is too weak to solve the competition between tasks. Therefore, this study confirms that HMA individuals find it difficult to implement attention proactively.
Belén González‐Gómez, M. Isabel Núñez‐Peña, and Àngels Colomé
Wiley
Why is math anxiety usually related to less efficient math processing? According to attentional control theory, anxiety leads to reduced attentional control, which often entails a greater investment of resources (e.g., more time or effort) to carry out a cognitive task. The executive functions mainly affected by anxiety are inhibition and shifting. Previous studies suggest that math anxiety may impair the inhibitory function. In the present study, the relationship between math anxiety and shifting efficiency when switching between two-digit additions and subtractions was examined. Twenty highly math-anxious and 20 low math-anxious individuals participated in an event-related potential (ERP) transition-cueing experiment. Math anxiety was expected to delay the shifting process, leading to a larger switch cost in response time and no centroparietal cue-locked switch-specific positivity registered in the electroencephalogram during the cue-target interval. Highly math-anxious individuals showed a larger switch cost than their low math-anxious peers. Asymmetrical switch effects between operations in response time were found in both groups, which might be due to larger sequential difficulty effects after subtractions than after additions. The cue-locked switch-specific positivity was present only in the low math-anxious group. The present results suggest that highly math-anxious individuals take longer to shift task sets. Additionally, the highly math-anxious group showed a more positive frontal P2 after the cue that announced a switch to subtraction, probably indicating stronger attentional capture by this cue, because the most threatening condition is anticipated. Taken together, these data suggest that math anxiety also impairs attentional control when switching between arithmetic tasks.
Belén González-Gómez, Àngels Colomé, and María Isabel Núñez-Peña
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
AbstractPrevious research about the existence of an attentional bias for math in highly math-anxious (HMA) individuals shows inconsistent results, and methodologies used so far cannot distinguish the various components of attentional bias. Here we adapted Grafton and MacLeod (2014)’s methodology to assess biases linked to math anxiety in engagement and disengagement when task-irrelevant math and neutral symbols are briefly presented. Twenty-one HMA and 21 low math-anxious individuals were asked to perform the attentional task just after solving an arithmetic task expected to generate group differences in state anxiety. Considering attentional control theory, state anxiety will likely increase allocation of attention to task-irrelevant stimuli. Therefore, individual differences in efficiency responding to this task, which despite being simple and non-mathematical is interrupted by task-irrelevant stimuli, were also analyzed to study whether HMA individuals show reduced attentional control. Our results provide evidence against the presence of an attentional bias towards/against mathematical symbols in visuospatial orienting of the HMA population, neither in the form of an engagement bias nor as a disengagement bias. Rather, HMA individuals were slower and could not take advantage of a longer interval to overcome distraction, which suggest less efficient attentional control, at least when they experience higher state anxiety. Therefore, it is unlikely that an attentional bias for math may originate or aggravate math anxiety. However, reduced attentional control may underlie the less efficient processing on math tasks usually shown by HMA individuals, so research on attention in math anxiety should keep focusing on HMA’s difficulties in executive control.
M.I. Núñez-Peña, À. Colomé, and B. González-Gómez
Elsevier BV
The Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect was examined in highly (HMA) and low math-anxious (LMA) individuals performing a number comparison in an ERP study. The SNARC effect consists of faster latencies when the response side is congruent with number location in the mental number line (MNL). Despite the stronger SNARC effect in the HMA group, their responses in incongruent trials were slower than in congruent trials only for the largest numerical magnitudes. Moreover, HMAs showed a less positive centroparietal P3b component in incongruent trials than in congruent ones, but only for the largest magnitudes. Since the SNARC effect arises during response selection and P3b positivity decreases with the difficulty of decision, this result suggests that HMA individuals might find it more difficult than LMAs to control the conflict between the automatically activated location of numbers in the MNL and the response side, especially in more cognitively demanding trials.
M. Isabel Núñez-Peña, Belén González-Gómez, and Àngels Colomé
Elsevier BV
Previous studies suggested that highly math-anxious (HMA) individuals invest more attentional resources than their low math-anxious (LMA) peers in numerical tasks, and have worse spatial skills. We aimed to explore whether they also need to apply more resources in spatial tasks. In this study, HMA and LMA individuals saw normal or mirror-reversed letters in six orientations and made mirror-normal decisions. In both groups, response times and errors increased with angular deviation from upright and the ERP mental rotation effect was found. However, HMAs were slower to respond than their LMA counterparts. Interestingly, the HMA group showed a larger P3b in greater deviations for normal letters and in all mirrored letters. Since P3b amplitude reflects the attentional resources invested in the categorization of relevant stimuli, HMA individuals may need to devote more processing effort than their LMA peers when performing mental rotation. This finding is consistent with the Attentional Control Theory.