Math anxiety: Relation with situational test anxiety, performance, physiological arousal, and math avoidance behavior.

Investigated the relation of mathematics anxiety to situationally assessed test anxiety, mathematics performance, physiological arousal, and mathematics avoidance behavior in 23 male and 40 female undergraduates. Ss completed the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale, the Mathematics Anxiety Scale, the Anxiety Toward Mathematics Scale, and the Test Anxiety Inventory prior to completing 3 mathematics tasks. During the tasks, heart rate, skin conductance level, skin fluctuations, and avoidance behavior were monitored. Ss also completed the Post-Task Questionnaire, a situational measure of test anxiety, worry, and emotionality. Results indicate that mathematics anxiety measures were more highly rated to each other than to test anxiety. Mathematics anxiety accounted for 14–23% of the variance in 2 tasks, whereas, ability accounted for 30–42%. Rarely, did anxiety add to the variance accounted for by ability. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)