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Meta-analyses from the 1990s previously have established a significant, small-to-moderate, and negative correlation between math achievement and math anxiety. Since these publications, research has continued to investigate this relation with more diverse samples and measures. Thus, the goal of the present meta-analysis was to provide an update of the math anxiety-math achievement relation and its moderators. Analyzing 747 effect sizes accumulated from research conducted between 1992 and 2018, we found a small-to-moderate, negative, and statistically significant correlation ( r = -.28) between math anxiety and math achievement. The relation was significant for all moderator subgroups, with the exception of the relation between math anxiety and assessments measuring the approximate number system. Grade level, math ability level, adolescent/adult math anxiety scales, math topic of anxiety scale, and math assessments were significant moderators of this relation. There is also a tendency for published studies to report significantly stronger correlations than unpublished studies, but overall, large, negative effect sizes are underreported. Our results are consistent with previous findings of a significant relation between math anxiety and math achievement. This association starts in childhood, remains significant through adulthood, is smaller for students in Grades 3 through 5 and postsecondary school, is larger for math anxiety than for statistics anxiety and for certain math anxiety scales, and is smaller for math exam grades and samples selected for low math ability. This work supports future research efforts to determine effective math achievement and math anxiety interventions, which may be most helpful to implement during childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

There is a growing literature concerning the role of the home math environment in children's math development. In this study, we examined the relation between these constructs by specifically addressing three goals. The first goal was to identify the measurement structure of the home math environment through a series of confirmatory factor analyses. The second goal was to examine the role of the home math environment in predicting parent report of children's math skills. The third goal was to test a series of potential alternative explanations for the relation between the home math environment and parent report of children's skills, specifically the direct and indirect role of household income, parent math anxiety, and parent math ability as measured by their approximate number system performance. A final sample of 339 parents of children aged 3 through 8 drawn from Mechanical Turk answered a questionnaire online. The best fitting model of the home math environment was a bifactor model with a general factor representing the general home math environment, and three specific factors representing the direct numeracy environment, the indirect numeracy environment, and the spatial environment. When examining the association of the home math environment factors to parent report of child skills, the general home math environment factor and the spatial environment were the only significant predictors. Parents who reported doing more general math activities in the home reported having children with higher math skills, whereas parents who reported doing more spatial activities reported having children with lower math skills., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The linear relations between math anxiety and math cognition have been frequently studied. However, the relations between anxiety and performance on complex cognitive tasks have been repeatedly demonstrated to follow a curvilinear fashion. In the current studies, we aimed to address the lack of attention given to the possibility of such complex interplay between emotion and cognition in the math-learning literature by exploring the relations among math anxiety, math motivation, and math cognition. In two samples-young adolescent twins and adult college students-results showed inverted-U relations between math anxiety and math performance in participants with high intrinsic math motivation and modest negative associations between math anxiety and math performance in participants with low intrinsic math motivation. However, this pattern was not observed in tasks assessing participants' nonsymbolic and symbolic number-estimation ability. These findings may help advance the understanding of mathematics-learning processes and provide important insights for treatment programs that target improving mathematics-learning experiences and mathematical skills., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Background: Emerging work suggests that academic achievement may be influenced by the management of affect as well as through efficient information processing of task demands. In particular, mathematical anxiety has attracted recent attention because of its damaging psychological effects and potential associations with mathematical problem solving and achievement. This study investigated the genetic and environmental factors contributing to the observed differences in the anxiety people feel when confronted with mathematical tasks. In addition, the genetic and environmental mechanisms that link mathematical anxiety with math cognition and general anxiety were also explored., Methods: Univariate and multivariate quantitative genetic models were conducted in a sample of 514 12-year-old twin siblings., Results: Genetic factors accounted for roughly 40% of the variation in mathematical anxiety, with the remaining being accounted for by child-specific environmental factors. Multivariate genetic analyses suggested that mathematical anxiety was influenced by the genetic and nonfamilial environmental risk factors associated with general anxiety and additional independent genetic influences associated with math-based problem solving., Conclusions: The development of mathematical anxiety may involve not only exposure to negative experiences with mathematics, but also likely involves genetic risks related to both anxiety and math cognition. These results suggest that integrating cognitive and affective domains may be particularly important for mathematics and may extend to other areas of academic achievement., (© 2014 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. © 2014 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to perform more poorly on tests of reading and mathematical performance than their typical peers. Quantitative genetic analyses allow for a better understanding of the etiology of ADHD and reading and mathematics outcomes, by examining their common and unique genetic and environmental influences. Analyses were conducted on a sample 271 pairs of 10-year-old monozygotic and dizygotic twins drawn from the Western Reserve Reading and Mathematics Project. In general, the results suggested that the associations among ADHD symptoms, reading outcomes, and math outcomes were influenced by both general genetic and general shared-environment factors. The analyses also suggested significant independent genetic effects for ADHD symptoms. The results imply that differing etiological factors underlie the relationships among ADHD and reading and mathematics performance. It appears that both genetic and common family or school environments link ADHD with academic performance.

The genetic and environmental etiology of high math performance (at or above the 85%tile) was examined in a population-based sample of 10-year-old twins (nMZ = 1,279, nDZ = 2,305). Math skills were assessed using a web-based battery of math performance tapping skills related to the UK National Math Curriculum. Probandwise concordance rates and liability threshold models indicated that genetic and shared environmental influences were significant, and that these estimates were generally similar to those obtained across the normal range of ability and did not vary significantly by gender. These results suggest that the genetic and environmental influences at the high end of ability are likely to be continuous with those that affect the entire range of math performance across all children irrespective of gender.