Early Signs of Mathematics Anxiety?

AbstractMathematics anxiety refers to individual's negative affect when engaging in numerical and mathematical tasks. Researchers have recently connected high math anxiety to lower performance on math tasks, developmental dyscalculia, and lower self-efficacy towards math learning. Math anxiety scales have been made and validated mainly for secondary school and high school students. In our paper we are looking for early signs of math anxiety using a Pictorial Test (37 pictures) which we have developed for 6 to 8 year old children. Children were asked to concentrate on one picture at a time and to write down spontaneously their emotional and mathematical ideas. Most powerful sources of sadness were real life subjects as animals and human beings. We also found high negative correlation between sadness () and math productions (r=-.60**). As a conclusive remark we are looking for ways in which school can respond to the learning challenges of these children