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Math Anxiety Affects Skills As Basic As Counting
thirty-seven writes "According to four Canadian psychologists, a study they have conducted shows that math anxiety, 'the feeling of fear and dread of performing mathematical calculations,' can negatively affect mathematical tasks much simpler and more basic than previously thought. In the study, participants were asked to count black squares on a white screen. The number of squares shown ranged from one to nine and participants were given as much time as they wanted before answering. When the number of squares was in the subitizing range (one to four), both math-anxious and non-math-anxious participants performed equally well, but when the number of squares was in the counting range (five to nine), the math-anxious group took longer and were less accurate. The University of Waterloo's news release about the study includes this interesting note: 'Previous studies have shown that a weakness in basic math abilities has a greater negative effect on employment opportunities than reading difficulties [do].'"
Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved ?
Yes, but I think what this study was trying to test was how basic the task has to be for the fear response to have a measurable effect. Turns out, pretty damn basic.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Math anxiety is turning out to be a much more complicated phenomena than one might thing. For example, there also was a very interesting study by Sian Beilock at the University of Chichago. Beilock showed that young girls who were exposed to female elementary school teachers were much more likely to develop math anxiety themselves than those not exposed to such teachers. See http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Publications/PNAS_2010.pdf. The exact consequences of Beilock's study are not clear. But combined with the study above, it seems to suggest that we need to do a better job with elementary school teachers. We need to either get rid of the school teachers with math anxiety or get rid of their math anxiety problems. Possibly some combination of both approaches may be in order: Improve the mathematical confidence of elementary school teachers whom we can effect and get rid of those we can't.
That's because one doesn't have to count to four; one just sees the items as 'four of them'.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Wow, how to know Java programmers: they are the ones who can't get their loop terminations correct without something automatic put in place to catch it.
Qxe4
Exactly. When science (actually Galileo) tried to confirm the "obvious" notion that heavy objects fall faster, it turned out that what was everybody thought was "obvious" was wrong. Hence the need to confirm things that seem obvious at first glance with scientific observation and analysis.
( 7 * 10) + (7 * 3)
70 + 21
91
Very easy if you break it into chunks. I cannot solve 7 * 13 directly but can solve it in easy-to-digest-steps. I tend to attempt to re-cast the problem when forced to do it mentally.