ASK THE COGNITIVE SCIENTIST

Math Anxiety: Can TeachersHelp Students Reduce It?

How does the mind work—and especially how does it learn? Teach-ers' instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learnedin teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gutinstinct. Such knowledge often serves us well, but is there anythingsturdier to rely on?

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers frompsychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science,

Sian L. Beilock is a professor ofpsychology and a member of the Committeeon Education at the University of Chicago. Her recent book. Choke: Whatthe Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To,discusses intelligence, performance, and how to succeed in high-pressuresituations. Daniel T. Willingham is a professor of cognitive psychology atthe University of Virginia. His most recent book. When Can You Trust theExperts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education, provides ashortcut for evaluating claims about programs and strategies. His previousbook. Why Don't Students Like School?, helps teachers apply research onthe mind to the classroom setting. For his articles on education, go to www.danielwillingham.com. Readers can pose questions to "Ask the CognitiveScientist" by sending an email to ae@aft.org. Future columns will try toaddress readers' questions.

and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regularAmerican Educator column, we consider findings from this fieldthat are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application.

BY SIAN L. BEILOCK AND DANIEL T. WILLINGHAM

Question: Some of my students seem to get really nervous aboutmath. I can tmderstand not liking the subject very much—to behonest, I don't love it myself^but their nervousness seems to getin the way of their understanding. How can I reassure them orotherwise make them less anxious?

Answer: There is no doubt that math makes some students veryanxious. This problem can begin as early as elementary school,and might be prompted both by genuine concerns—the studentperceives that his or her math skills need work—and by socialcues that subtly convey the message that math should be feared.Research on how to best help students through this problem isongoing, but there are a few techniques that teachers may finduseful.

28 AMERICAN EDUCATOR I SUMMER 2014

To many people, "math" is a scary four-letter word. Theydon't like it, they don't feel like they are very good at it,and they just want to stay away from it. People who feeltension, apprehension, and fear of situations involving

math are said to have math anxiety. And, perhaps not surpris-ingly, math anxiety is associated with poor math performancein school. Students with a high degree of math anxiety performworse in math from elementary school through college, relativeto their less math-anxious counterparts.' But, it's not just schoolsituations where a negative relationship between math anxietyand mathematical performance emerges. Higher levels of mathanxiety are associated with poor calculations of drug dosages bynurses and impaired financial planning.-

Math anxiety is not limited to a minority of individuals nor toone country. International comparisons of high school studentsshow that some students in every country are anxious aboutmath. It is perhaps unsurprising that there is an inverse relation-ship between anxiety and efficacy: countries where kids are lessproficient in math (as measured by the Program for InternationalStudent Assessment, or PISA) tend to have higher levels of mathanxiety.^ In the United States, an estimated 25 percent of four-year college students and up to80 percent of community collegestudents suffer from a moderateto high degree of math anxiety.""Most students report having atleast one negative experiencewith math at some point duringtheir schooling.'

Anecdotally, most of us canrecall a time when we overhearda friend, colleague, or familymember talk about his dislike formath or how she is "not a num-bers person." This is a notablecontrast to reading; few peoplecheerfully volunteer that they justaren't very good readers. It seemssocially acceptable to be anxious about math.

Because math anxiety is widespread and often tied to poormath skills, it's imperative to understand when anxiety aboutmath starts to emerge, where it comes from, and what we can doto alleviate it. Only then can we start to attack the phenomenon,identifying strategies that target both how material is taught andhow students feel about math, as a means to lower math anxiety,raise math achievement, and ensure that we are equipping stu-dents with the level of mathematics knowledge needed for the21st-century workplace. Although research on math anxiety goesback to the 1970s, it has really gained momentum only in the last10 years or so. Still, in that time, we have learned much about itsorigins and some ways to combat it.

When and How Does Math Anxiety Emerge?Recently, several studies have examined early elementary stu-dents, and they indicate that math anxiety starts early. Althoughthe specific details of these studies vary, the general questionshave been similar: Do early elementary students report mathanxiety and, if so, how is it related to math performance?

In one recent study, math anxiety was assessed in 154 first- andsecond-graders with a newly developed scale that asked themquestions like, "How do you feel when taking a big test in yourmath class?" or "How do you feel when getting your math bookand seeing all the numbers in it?"'' Kids responded by using a slid-ing scale that featured a calm face on the far right, a moderatelynervous face in the middle, and an obviously nervous face on thefar left (see figure below).

Because math anxiety iswidespread and tied to

poor math skills, we mustunderstand what we can

do to alleviate i t

SOURCE: GERARDO RAMIREZ, ELIZABETH A. GUNDERSON, SUSAN C. LEVINE, AND 5IAN I. BEILOCK, "MATHANXIETY, WORKING MEMORY, AND MATH ACHIEVEMENT IN EARLY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL," JOURNAL OF COGNI-TION AND DEVELOPMENT 14 (2013): 1B7-202. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF TAYLOR S FRANCIS LTD, WWW.TANDF.CO.UK/JOURNALS.

Several days later, they completed a standardized test of mathachievement (the Woodcock-Johnson III Applied Problems sub-test)." The test included items like identifying the correct time ona clock, money calculations, and word problems requiring arith-

metic or simple fraction work.Do first- and second-graders

report having math anxiety? Yes.Averaging across all the ques-tions, nearly 50 percent of thestudents reported medium tohigh levels of math anxiety, being"moderately nervous" to "very,very nervous" about math. Dothese reports of math anxietyrelate to students' math achieve-ment? Yes, and in the way youwould expect: higher math anxi-ety was associated with lowerachievement (though, as wediscuss below, this relation wasstronger for some students than

others). Finally, math anxiety's predictive power was specific tomath—there was little association between math anxiety andperformance on a reading comprehension test.

Is Math Anxiety Just AnotherName for "Bad at Math"?We've just reviewed findings that math anxiety and math achieve-ment are related. But how could it be otherwise? After all, math-anxious individuals stay away from math courses and math-relatedsituations, and they learn less math in the courses they do take.Indeed, it's tempting to conclude that their anxiety is logical—theyare anxious because they are bad at math. For that matter, maybethe whole notion of "math anxiety" is not useful. Some mightassume it's pretty much just another name for "poor math skills."

Math anxiety implies more than "bad at math." It implies thatsomeone would be better at math if he or she weren't so anxious.And there is evidence that's true. A growing body of work showsthat math anxiety robs people of working memory. You can thinkof working memory as a kind of mental scratch pad—it's whatallows you to keep several things in mind simultaneously, and to

AMERICAN EDUCATOR I SUMMER 2014 29

manipulate them in order to think and solve problems. Forexample, suppose a parent says to a teenager, "Your chores thisafternoon are to clean the cat litter box, set the table for dinner,and take out the trash. And if you could chop some vegetables forthe stew I'm going to make later, that would be nice." The teenthinks, "Chopping vegetables and cleaning the cat box will makea mess, so I should take out the trash after I do those chores. Andmy hands should be clean when I set the table and when I chopvegetables. So I guess I'll wash my hands, then set the table, thenchop vegetables, then clean the cat box, then take out the trash."Working memory is needed to keep the four chores in mind andto think about the consequences of doing each one in a particularsequence and to construct that sequence.

As you can imagine, if our teen had been given 10 choresinstead of four, she would not have been able to keep them all inmind. Working memory can only hold so much. And the amountof "space" in working memory varies from person to person. Giventhat working memory is impor-tant for solving problems, it's notsurprising that one's workingmemory capacity is related toone's problem-solving and rea-soning ability and to measures ofgeneral intelligence."

The role of working memoryin thinking helps us understandthe destructive consequences ofmath anxiety; anxious thoughtsconsume valuable workingmemory space.^ Math anxietyessentially prompts students todo two things at once: solve themath problem and deal withworries about the math (includ-ing worries about getting theproblem wrong, looking foolish,and what others may think ofthem). As a result, they have lessworking memory to devote tothe math, and their math perfor-mance suffers.

Neuroscientific data also sup-port this interpretation. For exam-ple, one group of researchersexplored neural activity in brainareas associated with negativeemotions and in brain areasknown to support numericalcomputations while third-grade children—both those lower andthose higher in math anxiety—performed math problems.'"When performing mathematical calculations, math-anxiouschildren, relative to their less anxious peers, show more brainactivity in the right amygdala (known to be important for pro-cessing negative emotions). This increased amygdala activitywas accompanied by a reduction in activity in brain regionsknown to support working memory and numerical processing(e.g., the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietallobe). Using similar functional magnetic resonance imaging

Math anxiety robspeople of working memory,

which is important forsolving problems.

(fMRI) methods, another group of researchers found that thehigher one's math anxiety, the larger the increase in activity inbrain regions associated with threat and the experience of pain."Interestingly, we observed this relation when highly math-anxious people just anticipated doing math.

Which Students Are Most Susceptible?Math anxiety may start when children are quite young, but itcan't come out of nowhere. What prompts it? Factors related toboth students' math abilities at the start of elementary schooland students' social environment (in the classroom, at home,and in society in general) likely play a role in the developmentof math anxiety.

We know that adults with math anxiety tend to have shortfallsin one or more of the basic building blocks of mathematical think-ing and reasoning. These building blocks include skills like count-ing objects, deciding which of two numbers represents the larger

quantity, and mentally rotatingthree-dimensional objects.'^ Wehave speculated that a poor graspof basic math building blocksearly in schooling may predisposestudents to develop math anxiety,partly in response to their poten-tial struggles in math. It seemspredictable that students whostruggle with math would bemore likely to become anxiousabout it.

Another characteristic of kidsis important, but this one doesn'tpredict who is likely to suffer fromanxiety. Instead, it predicts whosemath performance is most dis-rupted should they get anxious.And the finding is rather counter-intuitive: kids with the highestlevel of working memory showthe most pronounced negativerelation between math anxietyand math achievement.'^ In otherwords, students with the mostcognitive horsepower seem tosuffer the most as a function ofmath anxiety. How can this be?Math anxiety depresses mathperformance because it eats upworking memory space. Wouldn't

these students have spare working memory capacity, so anxietywould have less of an impact?

The answer to this question is not completely clear, but onepossibility is that students with the most working memory tendto rely on more advanced problem-solving strategies;'"" presum-ably, they're in the habit of using these cognitively demandingstrategies because they typically have the mental resources tocarry them out. For instance, a simple strategy for a first-gradersolving the problem "8 + 4 = ?" would be counting on his fingers.A strategy that demands more of working memory would be

3O AMERICAN EDUCATOR I SUMMER 2014

decomposition, or breaking down units so that they are easier toprocess (e.g., 8 + 4-^8 + 2 + 2). Because the advanced strategiesdemand more working memory, they are more sensitive to anxi-ety's deleterious effects. Ironically, something that usually helpskids in math—large working memory capacity—becomes vtilner-able to disruption when they are anxious.

Social Influences and Math AnxietyThere is some evidence that children might pickup on cues fromparents, teachers, or peers that math is, indeed, worthy of anxi-ety. Children who start schooling with deficiencies in basicmathematical skills may be especially predisposed to pick up onsocial cues (e.g., their teachers' behavior) that highlight math innegative terms.'^

There is also evidence of amore general link betweenteachers' behavior and students'math performance. In a prelimi-nary study of 17 teachers and117 first- and second-grade stu-dents, researchers found thatfemale elementary schoolteachers' math anxiety (over 90percent of elementary schoolteachers in the United States arefemale) related to their femalestudents' math achievement atthe end of the school year—thehigher a teacher's math anxiety,the lower her female students'math achievement by the end ofthe school year (that's afteraccounting for girls' beginning-of-the-year math achievementand teachers' math knowledge)."^Initially, we interpreted ourfindings as being specific to girls(a transmission of math negativ-ity from female teachers tofemale students). However, in alarge-scale follow-up enlistingmore than 70 teachers and 650of their first- and second-gradestudents, we found that teachers'math anxiety also is negativelyrelated to boys' math achieve-ment (albeit not as strongly) atthe end of the school year. Regard-less of a student's gender, his or her teacher's math anxietyseems to carry implications for the student's level of mathachievement.'^

Of course, there are many sources from which negativityabout math could develop—ranging from parents to the media.But, clearly, information about positive and negative aspects ofmath can be found in the classroom, and it seems, at least at firstglance, that not only do kids pick up on this negativity but it alsocarries implications for their math achievement across theschool year.

A course on how to teachmath concepts seems to be

more effective inaddressing math anxiety

among pre-service teachersthan a course on mathconcepts themselves.

What Can Teachers Do about Math Anxiety?While there is still a lot of work to be done to gain a completeunderstanding of math anxiety, knowing something about wheremath anxiety comes from, how it relates to math performance,and whom it is most likely to affect helps us start to think aboutthe remediation of math anxiety.

Ensure fundamental skills. Enhancing basic numerical andspatial processing may help guard against the development ofmath anxiety in young students. Research shows that the qualityof numerical and spatial talk by parents in the home is related tochildren's math and spatial skills." Thus, something as simpleas encouraging parents to engage with young children aroundmath may help ensure that children come to school with basic

mathematical competencies thathelp prevent math anxiety. Onthe flip side, identification of at-risk students, coupled with tar-geted exercises designed to boosttheir basic mathematical compe-tencies and regulate their poten-tial anxieties, may help to preventat-risk children from developingmath anxiety.

Focus on teacher training.Knowledge that a teacher's mathanxiety can affect her students'math achievement suggests thatwe also need to ensure that teach-ers feel fully confident in theirpreparation to teach math.Researchers have found that acourse focused on how to teachmath concepts was more effecfivein addressing math anxiety amongpre-service teachers than a coursefocused directly on the math con-cepts themselves.'̂ This point isespecially salient with the onset ofnew curricula prompted by theCommon Core State Standards.Even experienced teachers maybeasked to teach new material.

Try reducing anxiety by chang-ing the assessment. Math anxietydepresses math performancebecause it occupies working

memory. Research has shown that math anxiety is more stronglylinked to poor performance when students take a timed test.̂ °There are fikely several reasons why alleviating time pressuremakes math anxiety less of a problem, from reducing worriesabout not finishing in time, to giving students the time and spaceto work through their answers.

Try reducing anxiety through a writing exercise. Giving stu-dents the opportunity to write freely about their emotions forabout 10 minutes with respect to a specific situation (e.g., an

AMERICAN EDUCATOR I SUMMER 2014 31

upcoming exam) can help boost test performance. Writing isthought to alleviate the burden that negative thoughts placeon working memory by affording people an opportunity to re-evaluate the stressful experience, such as thinking, "Oh, maybethis math test isn't really that big of a deal." In recent work, weshowed that writing before an upcoming math test helpedreduce the performance gap between students with higherlevels of math anxiety and those with lower levels,^' and othershave shown that this writing exercise can be beneficial for testtaking in general, whether it is the MCAT̂ ^ or a high schoolbiology final.^' Of course, such writing may not be appropriatefor young students, which means there is still more work to bedone to determine how to alleviate the math anxiety that somestudents feel at the start of for-mal schooling.

Belowis an example of howwehave prompted students to puttheir thoughts down in writingbefore an exam (we also tell themthat their teachers won't see theirwriting and that no one will beable to link it to them):^"

When students struggle,teachers should acknowledgethat the work is challenging

but that they can do it.Take the next several minutes towrite as openly as possibleabout your thoughts and feel-ings regarding the exam you areabout to take. In your writing,really let yourself go and exploreyour emotions and thoughts asyou are getting ready to start theexam. You might relate yourcurrent thoughts to the way youhave felt during other similarsituations at school or in othersituations in y our life. Please tryto be as open as possible as youwrite about your thoughts atthis time.

Think carefully about what tosay when students struggle.When a student struggles withmath (or any subject), it's naturalto want to console him. You cansee he's frustrated and unhappy,and you want to help him feel better. But consoling the student—by saying, for example, "It's OK, not everyone can be good atthese types of problems"—may send the wrong message. Thestudent may understand the subtext to be, "You've failed, and Iam really sorry about that, but I'm not contradicting your con-clusion that this math work is too hard for you." Consolationsends a subtle message that validates the student's opinion thathe's not good at math, and can lower a student's motivations andexpectations for future performances.

A better message is only slightly different: "Yes, this work ischallenging, but I know that with hard work you can do it!" Thisacknowledges the student's experience—there's no sugarcoatingthe fact that he can't do it—but it expresses confidence that he

has the capability. Also, giving concrete strategies for changingup study habits or for approaching a particular problem differ-ently in the future helps him understand that, with added hardwork and effort, he has the potential for success.^^ D

Endnotes1. Erin A. Maloney and Sian L. Beilock, "Math Anxiety: Who Has it. Why It Develops, andHow to Guard against It," Trends in Cognitive Science 16 (2012): 404-406.

2. Miriam McMullan, Ray Jones, and Susan Lea, "Math Anxiety, Self-Efficacy, and Ability inBritish Undergraduate Nursing Students," Research in Nursing and Health 35 (2012):178-186; and Judy Sheaks McKenna and Sharon Y. Nickols, "Planning for RetirementSecurity: What Helps or Hinders Women in the Middle Years?," Home Economics ResearchJourna/16 (1988): 153-164.

3. Jihyun Lee, "Universals and Specifics of Math Self-Concept, Math Self-Efficacy, and MathAnxiety across 41 PISA 2003 Participating Countries," Learning and Individual Differences19(2009): 355-365.

4. W. George Jones, "Applying Psychology tothe Teaching of Basic Math: A Case Study,"Inquiry6, no. 2 (2001): 60-65; and David S.Yeager, " Productive Persistence: A PracticalTheory of Community College Student Success"(paper presented at the annual meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association,Vancouver, Canada, April 2012).

5. Joseph M. Furner and Mary Lou Duffy,"Equity for All Students in the New Millennium:Disabling Math Anxiety," Intervention in Schooland Clinic 38 (2002): 67-74.

6. Gerardo Ramirez, Elizabeth A. Gunderson,Susan C. Levine, and Sian L. Beilock, "MathAnxiety, Working Memory, and MathAchievement in Early Elementary School,"Journal of Cognition and Development 14(2013): 187-202. See also Sarah S. Wu, MariaBarth, Hitha Amin, Vanessa Malcarne, andVinod Menon, "Math Anxiety in Second andThird Graders and its Relation to MathematicsAchievement," Frontiers in Psychology 3. no.162(2012).

7. Richard W. Woodcock, Kevin S. McGrew,and Nancy Mather, Woodcock-Johnson III Testsof Cognitive Abiiities (Itasca, IL: Riverside,2001).

8. Randall W. Engle, "Working Memory Capacityas Executive Attention," Current Directions inPsychological Science U (2002): 19-23.

9. Mark H. Ashcraft, "Math Anxiety: Personal,Educational, and Cognitive Consequences,"Current Directions in Psychological Science 11(2002): 181-185; and Sian L. Beilock, "MathPerformance in Stressful Situations," CurrentDirections in Psychological Science 17 (2008):339-343.

10. Christina B. Young, Sarah S. Wu, and VinodMenon, "Neurodevelopmental Basis of MathAnxiety," Psychological Science 23 (2012):492-501.

11. Ian M. Lyons and Sian L. Beilock,"Mathematics Anxiety: Separating the Mathfrom the Anxiety," Cerebral Cortex 22 (2012):2102-2110.

12. Erin A. Maloney, Evan F. Risko, DanielAnsari, and Jonathan Fugelsang, "MathematicsAnxiety Affects Counting but Not Subitizing

during Visual Enumeration," Cognition 114(2010): 293-297; Erin A. Maloney, Daniel Ansari,and Jonathan A. Fugelsang, "The Effect of Mathematics Anxiety on the Processing ofNumerical Magnitude," Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 64 (2011): 10-16; andErin A. Maloney, Stephanie Waechter, Evan F Risko, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang, "Reducingthe Sex Difference in Math Anxiety: The Role of Spatial Processing Ability," Learning andIndividuai Differences 22 (2012): 380-384.

13. Ramirez et al., "Math Anxiety, Working Memory, and Math Achievement": GerardoRamirez, "The Cognitive Mechanism Underlying Math Anxiety in Early Elementary School"(PhD diss.. University of Chicago, 2013); and Rose K. Vukovic, Michael J. Kieffer, Sean PBailey and Rachel R. Hariri, "Mathematics Anxiety in Young Children: Concurrent andLongitudinal Associations with Mathematical Performance," Contemporary EducationalPsychology 38 {20^3): 1-10.

14. Pierre Barrouiilet and Raphaelle Lépine, "Working Memory and Children's Use of Retrievalto Solve Addition Problems, " Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 91 (2005): 183-204;and David C. Geary, Mary K. Hoard, Jennifer Byrd-Craven, and M. Catherine DeSoto,"Strategy Choice in Simple and Complex Addition: Contributions of Working Memory andCounting Knowledge for Children with Mathematical Disability," Journal of ExperimentalChiid Psychology 88 (2 004) : 121 -151 .

(Continued on page 43)

32 AMERICAN EDUCATOR 1 SUMMER 2014

Taken for Granted(Continuedfrom page 27)

Endnotesl.GroverJ. "Russ" Whitehurst, "Don't Forget Curriculum,"Brown Center Letters on Education, Brookings Institution,October 2009.

2. Matthew M. Chingos and Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst,Choosing Blindly: Instructionai Materials, TeacherEffectiveness, and the Common Core (Washington, DC:Brookings Institution, 2012).

3. Daniel T. Willingham, "Ask the Cognitive Scientist: What IsDeuelopmentally Appropriate Practice?, " American Educator32, no. 2 {Summer 2008): 34-39. See also Daniel IWillingham, " Do We Underestimate Our Youngest Learners?, "RealClearEducation, March 11,2014; Deborah Kelemen,Natalie A. Emmons, Rebecca Seston Schillaci, and Patricia A.Ganea, "Young Children Can Be Taught Basic Natural SelectionUsing a Picture-Storybook Intervention," Psychological Science25(2014): 893-902; Caren M. Walkerand Alison Gopnik,"Toddlers Infer Higher-Order Relational Principles in CausalLearning," Psychological Science 25 (2014): 151-159; andEmma Flynn and Robert Siegler, "Measuring Change: CurrentTrends and Future Directions in Microgenetic Research," Infantand Child Development 15 (2007): 135-149.

4. To read more from Jena Peluso, as well as quotes fromother teachers using Core Knowledge Language Arts, seewww.bit.ly/1mFUHQs.

5. Heidi Cole, "Children Are Curious and Capable—and

Teachers Should Be Too, " Core Knowledge Blog (blog),September 25, 2013, http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2013/09/26/children-are-curious-and-capable-and-te3chers-should-be-too.

6. E. D. Hirsch Jr, "Sustaining the American Experiment," inKnowledge at the Core: Don Hirsch, Core Knowledge, andthe Future of the Common Core, ed. Chester E. Finn Jr. andMichael J. Petrilli (Washington, DC: Thomas B. FordhamInstitute, 2014), 7-14.

Cognitive Scientist(Continuedfrom page 32)

15. Maloneyand Beilock, "Math Anxiety."

16. Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, GerardoRamirez, and Susan C. Levine, "Female Teachers' MathAnxiety Affects Girls' Math Achievement," Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the United States ofAmerica 107 (2010): 1860-1853.

17. Erin A. Maloney, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, GerardoRamirez, Susan C. Levine, and Sian L. Beilock, "Teachers'Math Anxiety Relates to Girls' and Boys' Math Achievement"(unpublished manuscript, 2014).

18. Susan C. Levine, Linda Whealton Suriyakham, MeredithL. Rowe, Janellen Huttenlocher, and Elizabeth A.Gunderson, "What Counts in the Development of YoungChildren's Number Knowledge?," DevelopmentalPsychology 46 (2010): 1309-1319; and Shannon M.

Prüden, Susan C. Levine, and Janellen Huttenlocher,"Children's Spatial Thinking: Does Talk about the SpatialWorld Matter?," Developmental Science 14 (2011):1417-1430.

19. D. James Tooke and Leonard C. Lindstrom, "Effective-ness of a Mathematics Methods Course in Reducing MathAnxiety of Preservice Elementary Teachers," School Scienceand Mathematics 98 (1998): 135-139.

20. Michael W. Faust, Mark H. Ashcraft, and David E. Fleck,"Mathematics Anxiety Effects in Simple and ComplexAddition," Mathematical Cognition 2 (1996): 25-52.

21. Daeun Park, Gerardo Ramirez, and Sian L. Beilock, "TheRole of Expressive Writing in Math Anxiety," Journal ofExperimental Psychology: Applied (forthcoming), publishedelectronically April 7, 2014, doi:l0.1037/xap0000013.

22. Joanne Frattaroli, Michael Thomas, and SonjaLyubomirsky "Opening Up in the Classroom: Effects ofExpressive Writing on Graduate School Entrance ExamPerformance," Emotion 11 (2011): 691-595.

23. Gerardo Ramirez and Sian L. Beilock, "Writing aboutTesting Worries Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom,"Science 331, no. 5014 (January 14, 2011): 211-213.

24. Eor the complete writing prompts, see Park, Ramirez,and Beilock, "Role of Expressive Writing in Math Anxiety";and Ramirez and Beilock, "Writing about Testing Worries."

25. Aneeta Rattan, Catherine Good, and Carol S. Dweck,"'It's OK—Not Everyone Can Be Good at Math': Instructorswith an Entity Theory Comfort (and Demotivate) Students,"Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012):731-737.

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