Age-Related Differences of Individuals' Arithmetic Strategy Utilization with Different Level of Math Anxiety.
The present study used the choice/no-choice method to investigate the effect of math anxiety on the strategy used in computational estimation and mental arithmetic tasks and to examine age-related differences in this regard. Fifty-seven fourth graders, 56 sixth graders, and 60 adults were randomly selected to participate in the experiment. Results showed the following: (1) High-anxious individuals were more likely to use a rounding-down strategy in the computational estimation task under the best-choice condition. Additionally, sixth-grade students and adults performed faster than fourth-grade students on the strategy execution parameter. Math anxiety affected response times (RTs) and the accuracy with which strategies were executed. (2) The execution of the partial-decomposition strategy was superior to that of the full-decomposition strategy on the mental arithmetic task. Low-math-anxious persons provided more accurate answers than did high-math-anxious participants under the no-choice condition. This difference was significant for sixth graders. With regard to the strategy selection parameter, the RTs for strategy selection varied with age.
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University Jinan, China.
Jiwei
J
Si
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University Jinan, China.
Hongxia
H
Li
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University Jinan, China.
Yan
Y
Sun
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University Jinan, China.
Yanli
Y
Xu
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University Jinan, China.
Yu
Y
Sun
age-related differences; computational estimation; math anxiety; mental arithmetic; strategy utilization