title: Attentional bias in high math-anxious individuals: evidence from an emotional Stroop task.
abstract: Attentional bias toward threatening or emotional information is considered a cognitive marker of anxiety, and it has been described in various clinical and subclinical populations. This study used an emotional Stroop task to investigate whether math anxiety is characterized by an attentional bias toward math-related words. Two previous studies failed to observe such an effect in math-anxious individuals, although the authors acknowledged certain methodological limitations that the present study seeks to avoid. Twenty high math-anxious (HMA) and 20 low math-anxious (LMA) individuals were presented with an emotional Stroop task including math-related and neutral words. Participants in the two groups did not differ in trait anxiety or depression. We found that the HMA group showed slower response times to math-related words than to neutral words, as well as a greater attentional bias (math-related - neutral difference score) than the LMA one, which constitutes the first demonstration of an attentional bias toward math-related words in HMA individuals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioural Sciences Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain ; Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Macarena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Suárez-Pellicioni
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioural Sciences Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain ; Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria Isabel
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Núñez-Peña
authors.affiliation: Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain ; Department of Basic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Àngels
authors.initials: À
authors.lastname: Colomé
keywords: attentional bias; emotional Stroop task; math anxiety