WORRYING that you’re bad at maths will only make the problem worse, say
psychologists. Mark Ashcraft and his colleagues at Cleveland State University in
Ohio will report in the Journal Of Experimental Psychology that anxiety reduces
the amount of working memory available in the brain for solving mathematical
problems. Helping people to control their anxiety should improve their maths.
“Math anxiety is learned, so it can be unlearned and overcome,” says
Ashcraft.
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