Math Anxiety
How does math anxiety influence other aspects of cognition, such as attention, executive function, and learning?
Decades of research has established that math anxiety influences cognition, especially working memory resources (Ashcraft, 2002; Beilock, 2008; Ramirez, Shaw, & Maloney, 2018). We first sought to understand how math anxiety influences other cognitive functions, such as initial attentional deployment (Pizzie & Kraemer, 2017), inspired by the idea that initial reactions to mathematical stimuli may be similar to the responses to negative stimuli observed in general anxiety or phobia. When presented with mathematical information, highly math anxious individuals immediately disengaged from the information, instead choosing to look at linguistic script (control condition). Additionally, during the math trials, more highly math anxious individuals show increased amygdala reactivity. Overall, this pattern demonstrates that math anxiety is associated with anxious avoidance, illustrated by a disengagement bias for math stimuli and increased amygdala activity.
More math anxious individuals show increased amygdala reactivity during math trials
(Pizzie & Kraemer, Brain & Cognition, 2017)
This pattern of avoidance was also observed in an additional experiment designed to explore if math anxiety would influence executive function (Pizzie, Raman, & Kraemer, 2020). This research specifically explored the association between math anxiety and task-switching, or shifting, and neural activity in a network of regions associated with arithmetic processing. Highly math anxious individuals demonstrated a pattern of behavior indicative of avoidance, speeding through switch trials and showing decreased neural activity in regions of the brain that would have supported the math computations for the task at hand. In contrast, individuals who were low in math anxiety showed a normative switch-cost in math, and showed increased neural activity in the arithmetic network. Connecting the research across these two studies, our work demonstrates that across early attention and executive function, math anxious individuals show a behavioral pattern of avoidance, supported by increased vigilance demonstrated through increased amygdala reactivity, and decreased activity in regions of the brain hypothesized to support math computations.
More math anxious individuals show decreased activity in regions of the brain associated with arithmetic processing when encountering initial problems
(Pizzie, Raman, & Kraemer, CABN, 2020)
In collaboration with Dr. Ian Lyons, we are investigating the relation between math anxiety and learning and memory processes. Specifically, we hypothesized that highly math anxious individuals may gravitate toward different math learning strategies, such as memorization, and this may influence math performance. Additionally, by monitoring psychophysiological activity, we will examine how increased sympathetic nervous system activity during both mathematical calculations and feedback predicts learning across the spectrum of math anxiety. Overall, developing a better understanding of how math anxiety impacts cognition, learning, and brain function will inform better interventions to help students overcome the detriments to math performance associated with math anxiety.
How do emotion regulation processes influence psychophysiological and neural correlates of math anxiety?
Another line of my research introduces an emotion regulation strategy as an intervention to ameliorate the deficits associated with increased anxiety. In two lab-based studies, we developed and tested the efficacy of a novel cognitive intervention for math anxiety, adapted from the emotion regulation literature. First, in an fMRI study (Pizzie, McDermott, Salem, & Kraemer, invited revision, 2020) that tasked participants with completing math problems during scanning, we introduced cognitive reappraisal, an effective strategy for reframing or rethinking negative emotionality in a way that downregulates negative affect (Gross, 1998; 2013). For highly math anxious individuals, cognitive reappraisal was associated with increases in math performance and reduction in self-reported negative affect, and increases neural activity in the arithmetic network. The more that highly math anxious individuals were able to improve their performance by utilizing a reappraisal strategy, the more neural activity was observed in regions of the brain that support effective math calculation.
When highly math anxious individuals use reappraisal to regulate their emotions, we observe increased activity in regions of. the brain associated with arithmetic processing which is associated with increased accuracy in math
(Pizzie, McDermott, Salem, & Kraemer, invited revision SCAN, 2020) 
Furthering this research, in a psychophysiology experiment (Pizzie & Kraemer, 2018) we examined how cognitive reappraisal is associated with electrodermal activity and math performance for high and low math anxious individuals. For highly math anxious individuals, implementing a reappraisal strategy attenuated the negative relationship between electrodermal arousal and math performance. Thus, across measures of physiology and brain activity, our research shows that cognitive reappraisal is associated with improved math performance, increased neural activity in arithmetic regions, and attenuated physiological responses.