Learning to relax: Evaluating four brief interventions for overcoming the negative emotions accompanying math anxiety

a r t i c l e i n f o Focused breathing Executive control We examined the potential effectiveness of four brief interventions, three behavioral and one nutritional, for helping high math-anxious college students regulate negative emotions immediately prior to a time-pressured arithmetic test. Participants with low versus high math anxiety performed a timed arithmetic task after practicing one of three short-term breathing exercises promoting focused attention, unfocused attention, or worry, and after consuming either 0 or 200 mg L-theanine. Overall, participants with high math anxiety underperformed relative to those with low math anxiety. This effect, however, was largely alleviated by a focused breathing exercise, which increased rated calmness and enhanced performance on the arithmetic test amongst those with high math anxiety. L-theanine supplementation showed only minimal effects. These results provide insights into the attentional mechanisms involved in regulating the negative emotions that lead to testing underperformance, and suggest that focused breathing exercises can be a useful, practical tool for helping address the negative impacts of math anxiety. Individual differences in math anxiety cause many intellectually capable students to opt out of higher mathematics education, ultimately decreasing enrollment in mathematics courses and reducing work force competencies (for a review, see Ashcraft, 2002). Identifying reliable and tractable therapeutic methods for reducing the negative emotions accompanying math anxiety is critical to increasing student participation in higher mathematics education, increasing mathematics competencies, and supporting math-related career decisions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Ashcraft & Krause, 2007). To this end, we examined the effects of four brief interventions, three behavioral mindfulness interventions (focused breathing, unfo-cused breathing, versus a worry exercise) and one nutritional intervention (L-theanine supplementation), on reducing negative emotions and boosting math testing performance in individuals with low versus high levels of math anxiety. An estimated majority (Perry, 2004) of college students exhibit math anxiety, characterized by feelings of fear and tension in anticipation of situations demanding the application of mathematics knowledge (Ashcraft, 2002). Students with high math anxiety avoid math exposure in both daily life (e.g., calculating a tip at a restaurant) and formal educational coursework (e.g., calculus), ultimately resulting in lower exposure to math, reduced practice using mathematics principles, and reduced workforce math competence. Because time-pressured testing situations characterize many college mathematics courses, math anxiety becomes a primary impediment to students' academic success. Individual differences in the ability to effectively control attention during testing (often measured via …