The impact of playing a math game at home on children’s math anxiety and math performance. In D. Sasanguie (chair), 'Understanding variability in math anxiety and its impact on math performance'. Symposium conducted at the biennial meeting of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI)

Recently it has been suggested that there might exist a bidirectional relationship between math anxiety (MA) and mathematics performance, in which MA and mathematics performance can influence one another in a vicious cycle (Carey, Hill, Devine, & Szücs, 2016). Given his “Reciprocal Theory”, we hypothesized that an intervention will evoke the largest outcomes when children train with math content while their math anxiety is reduced. In order to reduce MA, we made use of technology in the form of a math app. A pretest-posttest intervention study with an experimental and control group design was conducted to reduce children’s MA and to examine whether training with this math app positively influenced their math performance. In the experimental group, children trained 4 weeks (min 5 min/week) with a math app. In the control group, children trained similarly with an app, but not in the domain of mathematics, i.e. a word search app. Both groups registered how much time they played with the app. Pre- and posttest measures consisted of a MA questionnaire and a math performance test. In total, 100 (i.e. 50 per group) fifth graders (11 years) will be examined. Currently, we are halfway data collection (22 children per group) and preliminary results indicated significantly less reported MA and better math performance after the training in the experimental group whereas no significant differences were observed in the control group.status: publishe