Relationships between 9-Year-Olds' Math and Literacy Worries and Academic Abilities

By Laura Punaro, Robert A. Reeve. 2012

61 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigated whether 9-year-olds experience math and/or literacy worries and, if they do, whether it is related to problem-solving abilities. Fifty-eight children judged the correctness of math, literacy, and mental rotation problems that differed in difficulty and rated their worry level about the correctness of judgments. Nonverbal IQ, general math, and literacy abilities were also assessed. Results showed children's worry ratings varied as a function of task and problem difficulty. Latent class analyses of math and literacy worry ratings revealed high-, moderate- and low-worry subgroups in both domains. The high-worry math subgroup exhibited poorer math performance than the other math subgroups, demonstrating a link between math worry and math performance. No relationship was found between worry literacy subgroups and literacy performance. Moreover, no relationship was found between teachers’ rating of children's academic and general worry and children’s own worry ratings. The relevance of the findings for understanding math and literacy worry is discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Education, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3c56561ffe45c250cf5e12dd6867041888cf488d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. A. Dowker

In Education

1. C. Looi
2. Amar Sarkar
3. S. Buckley
4. A. Dowker
5. M. Goos
6. Wayne Holmes

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. C. Looi
2. Amar Sarkar
3. S. Buckley
4. A. Dowker
5. S. Thomson
6. M. Goos

Citations in the corpus

• Mathematics Anxiety: What Have We Learned in 60 Years? (2016, background): “Punaro and Reeve (2012) reported a study that directly compared mathematics and literacy anxiety in Australian 9-yearolds and related their anxiety to their actual academic abilities.”
• Understanding and addressing mathematics anxiety using perspectives from education, psychology and neuroscience (2016, background): “In a study of Australian primary students, anxiety about mathematics was higher than literacy anxiety (Punaro & Reeve, 2012); self-reported MA was negatively associated with mathematics performance, yet there was no relationship between literacy anxiety and literacy performance.”