Remediation of childhood math anxiety and associated neural circuits through cognitive tutoring
Open accessAbstract
Math anxiety is a negative emotional reaction that is characterized by feelings of stress and anxiety in situations involving mathematical problem solving. High math-anxious individuals tend to avoid situations involving mathematics and are less likely to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math-related careers than those with low math anxiety. Math anxiety during childhood, in particular, has adverse long-term consequences for academic and professional success. Identifying cognitive interventions and brain mechanisms by which math anxiety can be ameliorated in children is therefore critical. Here we investigate whether an intensive 8 week one-to-one cognitive tutoring program designed to improve mathematical skills reduces childhood math anxiety, and we identify the neurobiological mechanisms by which math anxiety can be reduced in affected children. Forty-six children in grade 3, a critical early-onset period for math anxiety, participated in the cognitive tutoring program. High math-anxious children showed a significant reduction in math anxiety after tutoring. Remarkably, tutoring remediated aberrant functional responses and connectivity in emotion-related circuits anchored in the basolateral amygdala. Crucially, children with greater tutoring-induced decreases in amygdala reactivity had larger reductions in math anxiety. Our study demonstrates that sustained exposure to mathematical stimuli can reduce math anxiety and highlights the key role of the amygdala in this process. Our findings are consistent with models of exposure-based therapy for anxiety disorders and have the potential to inform the early treatment of a disability that, if left untreated in childhood, can lead to significant lifelong educational and socioeconomic consequences in affected individuals. Significance statement: Math anxiety during early childhood has adverse long-term consequences for academic and professional success. It is therefore important to identify ways to alleviate math anxiety in young children. Surprisingly, there have been no studies of cognitive interventions and the underlying neurobiological mechanisms by which math anxiety can be ameliorated in young children. Here, we demonstrate that intensive 8 week one-to-one cognitive tutoring not only reduces math anxiety but also remarkably remediates aberrant functional responses and connectivity in emotion-related circuits anchored in the amygdala. Our findings are likely to propel new ways of thinking about early treatment of a disability that has significant implications for improving each individual's academic and professional chances of success in today's technological society that increasingly demands strong quantitative skills.
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Acute stress and chronic stress can have deleterious effects on cognitive abilities.
“However, acute stress (e.g. test anxiety) and outside factors contributing to chronic stress (e.g. poverty) can have deleterious effects on one's cognitive abilities [4,30,31].”
From The neuroscience of emotion regulation development: Implications for education (2016) · cites this paper as [30]
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- Authors
- Supekar, K., Iuculano, T., Chen, L., & Menon, V.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Stanford Medicine (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2015-09-09
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 36
- Pages
- 12574-12583
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC4563039
- OpenAlex
- W1669314434
- Cited by
- 187
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 57 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 9.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Scholar Commons (Santa Clara University) (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression
- National Institutes of Health
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD047520, HD059205, R01HD047520, R01HD059205)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Education, Achievement, and Giftedness
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Keywords
- mathematics anxiety, basolateral amygdala, amygdala reactivity, neural circuits, exposure therapy, mathematical skills, early childhood intervention, functional connectivity
- MeSH terms
- Anxiety, Child, Female, Humans, Male, Mathematics, Problem Solving, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Connectome
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