MINDFULNESS AND MATH ANXIETY 1

The Effect of a Brief Mindfulness Exercise and Math Anxiety on State Anxiety

Olivia K. Eckhoff

University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Abstract

Mindfulness is a form of non-judgmental awareness (Kabat-Zinn, 2005) that has been shown to decrease stress and anxiety (Greeson, 2008); however, little is known about the benefits of very brief practice. This research examined the effects of mindfulness and self-reported math anxiety on state anxiety after 10 minutes of mindfulness exercise. In two experiments, participants completed a survey and pre-test measures of anxiety, listened to a 10-minute mindfulness exercise, and completed a post-test measure of state anxiety. In study 1, participants with high math anxiety showed a significantly greater reduction in state anxiety than participants with low math anxiety. However, there was as no significant differences in state anxiety among the different mindfulness exercises. Also, math anxiety had less of an effect for individuals with high mindfulness. In study 2, reduction in anxiety symptoms varied by gender and whether or not participants had received counseling for anxiety. Females who received counseling showed a greater reduction than females who had not received counseling; however, there was no difference in reduction for males.

The Effect of a Brief Mindfulness Exercise and Math Anxiety on State Anxiety

College students experience considerable stress and anxiety, especially first generation college students. A student’s ability to manage daily stressors directly impacts both academic performance and overall health. How can college students manage their stress and anxietymore effectively? Emotion regulation describes “a set of processes whereby people seek to redirect the spontaneous flow of their emotions” (Koole, 2010, p. 129). Theorists have established that an individual’s evaluation of a situation triggers emotion, but the situation alone does not (Gross, 1999). Koole (2010) identified two common strategies for regulating our emotions: bodily and cognitive strategies. Bodily strategies incorporate breathing and relaxation. Cognitive strategies include attention and reappraisal,which involves changing how we view a situation in a way that reduces negative emotional response. Both bodily and cognitive strategies are effective for reducing stress and anxiety (Koole, 2010). The current study considers whether emotion regulation strategies can be used to reduce math anxiety.

An alternative approach to emotion regulation, that integrates both bodily and cognitive strategies, is mindfulness, which is defined as the non-judgmental awareness of the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). Mindfulness is a self-regulation strategy that decreases emotional distress, increases quality of life, and promotes optimal health (Greeson, 2008). According to Kabat-Zinn (2005), attention, emotion regulation, body awareness, and shift of perspective on the self, are skills that anyone can learn and practice in everyday settings in order to more effectively manage life’s daily stressors. Research on mindfulness has shown that mindfulness reduces stress and stress-related illnesses in both clinical and student populations; mindfulness is also associated with cognitive, emotional, biological, and behavioral changes (Greeson, 2008). Neuroimaging studies have found that mindfulness is linked to structural changes in specific areas of the brain believed to improve self-regulation and reduce emotional reactivity (Hölzel et al., 2011).

Although past research has demonstrated effects of mindfulness on stress and well-being, few studies have considered how mindfulness could help math anxiety. Math anxiety is “a feeling of tension, apprehension, or fear that interferes with math performance” (Ashcraft, 2002, p. 181) that is experienced by many college students. Individuals with high levels of math anxiety tend to avoid math classes, receive lower grades in math classes, have negative attitudes toward math, and have negative self-perceptions (Akin & Kurbanoglu, 2011; Ashcraft, 2002). Consequently, students with math anxiety receive lower scores on standardized tests, though only a weak correlation exists between math anxiety and overall intelligence. Despite evidence that math anxiety is separate from other anxieties, individuals with math anxiety are more likely to score high on other anxiety tests, and women are more likely to have math anxiety than men (Ashcraft, 2002).

Some researchers have argued that math-anxious students’ math scores are lower because of their anxiety towards the math – not their lack of math skills alone (Akin & Kurbanoglu, 2011; Ashcraft, 2002). According to processing efficiency theory, anxiety interferes with ongoing working memory due to one’s attention to anxious thoughts rather than the immediate task (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992 as cited by Ashcraft, 2002); similarly, math anxiety hinders math performance when individuals focus on their distracting thoughts instead of the math problems themselves. Ashcraft and Kirk (2001) provided support for this theory by showing that math anxiety involves interference with working memory. Moreover, a functional MRI study on children found an over-activity in areas of the brain associated with regulating negative emotions (Young, Wu, & Menon, 2012). This suggests that if students could more effectively regulate their negative emotions toward doing math, they could overcome their math anxiety. Therefore, mindfulness, an emotion regulation strategy, may be especially helpful for individuals with math anxiety.

The effect of mindfulness on reducing stress and anxiety has been widely demonstrated, but there is some question as to the amount of mindfulness training needed to produce beneficial effects. Rosenzweig,Reibel, Greeson, Brainard, and Hojat(2003) found that, after practicing mindfulness twenty minutes per day for ten weeks, medical students experienced less anxiety and depression and a higher state of overall well-being. Several other studies have found these benefits in even shorter interventions (Flugel Colle,Vincent, Cha, Loehrer, Bauer, Wahner-Roedler,2010; Greeson, 2008; Harnett, Whittingham, Puhakka, Hodges, Spry, & Dob, 2010; Tang, Ma, Wang, Fan, Feng, Lu, Yu, Sui, Rothbart, Fan, & Posner, 2007). Harnett et al. (2010)found that after three 2-hour sessions of mindfulness practice (e.g. body scan, breathing, etc.), one-third of participants showed reduced stress levels linked to mindfulness. Furthermore, Tang et al. (2007) had participants complete five 20-minute mindfulness sessions, in which participants showed a decrease in anxiety and stress-related cortisol. Although research on mindfulness has shown that relatively short mindfulness interventions can reduce anxiety, little is known about the effectiveness of a single, brief mindfulness intervention, especially regarding students with math anxiety.

The goal of the present study was to examine how a brief mindfulness exercise and level of math anxiety will influence students’ state anxiety. After completing pre-test measures, participants will complete a 10-minute mindfulness exercise (breathing / body scan), perform several math problems, and then do a post-test measure of anxiety. First, it is predicted that participants who do the brief mindfulness exercise will have a greater reduction in state anxiety than participants in the wait-list control group. It is expected that participants who do a breathing exercise will have a greater reduction in state anxiety than participants who do a body scan. Second, it is expected that participants with high math anxiety will show greater reduction in state anxiety than participants with low math anxiety. Lastly, it is predicted that the effect of a brief mindfulness exercise will vary according to level of math anxiety. For example, the effect of the brief mindfulness exercise will be greater for participants who have high math anxiety than participants with low math anxiety.

Experiment 1

Method

Participants

Ninety-two undergraduate students,56 males, 33 females, and 3 unreported, (Mage = 18.9 years, SD = 1.08, age range: 18-23 years) enrolled in General Psychology participated in the study. Participants were predominantly white, reflecting the demographics of the local community. Students received course credit for participation, though an alternate exercise was provided for students who do not wish to participate.

Design

The study had a 3 x 2 factorial design. The first independent variable was the brief mindfulness exercise with three levels (breathing, body scan, control), which was a between-subjects variable. The second independent variable was the level of math anxiety (high, low), which was a quasi-experimental variable. The main dependent variable was the change in state anxiety before and after the mindfulness exercise.

Materials

The stimulus presented to participants was a 10-minute excerpt from a mindfulness exercise CD, either a “Mindfulness of Breathing” or “Full Body Mindfulness” exercise (“Mindfulness for Beginners”; Kabat-Zinn, 2005). The breathing exercise suggested that listeners place full awareness on one’s own breath, to notice how often the mind wanders, and to bring one’s attention gently back to the breath after it has shifted. The body scan exercise emphasized that listeners include the experiences of the body as a whole into awareness, that participants allow specific sensations to be brought into attention, and to recognize thoughts as thoughts.

The questionnaire presented to participants contained a total of 65 questions including demographic information (age, sex, year in school, general background, math history), Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale-Revised (CAMS-R; Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, & Laurenceau, 2007), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003), Math Evaluation Anxiety scale (MEA; Plake & Parker, 1982),and items from State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Kabacoff, Segal, Hersen, & Van Hasselt,1997) and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS; Lovibond &Lovibond, 1995) for measures of trait and state stress and anxiety. All responses were rated on a 1-8 scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree; however, the MEA was rated from low anxiety to high anxiety.

There were two general background questions, “Have you ever sought counseling?” and “Have you ever taken medication for anxiety?” and two math history questions, “How many math classes have you taken in college?” and “What is the highest level of math class that you have taken?” The CAMS-R and ERQ inquired about attention and emotion regulation tendencies by asking participants to rate the degree to which they agreed with statements, such as “I am easily distracted,” and “I keep my emotions to myself”. Trait Stress and Anxiety (TSA) items from the STAI and DASS asked participants to rate the degree to which they agreed with statements such as, “I find it difficult to relax,” in order to determine participants’ trait tendencies towards stress and anxiety. Pre-Post State Anxiety statements asked about participants’ immediate states of stress and anxiety with statements such as “I am tense”. The MEA asked participants to rate items in terms of how anxious participants felt during a specific event, such as “Getting ready to study for a math test”.

Procedure

A female experimenter conducted four 30-minute small group sessions in a classroom setting. Participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group (breathing / body scan) or a wait-list control group. The experimenterfirst described the study and obtained consent from participants. All participants completed the questionnaire, but participants in the experimental group paused before the final ten measures of post-state anxiety and listened to one of the two 10-minute excerpts from the mindfulness exercise CD, and participants in the experimental group returned to the post-state anxiety measures. Participants in the control group completed the entire questionnaire and had an opportunity to do the mindfulness exercise after the post-test measure of state anxiety. Finally, the experimenter provided a debriefing form, answered questions, and thanked the students for participating.

Results

It was hypothesized that a brief mindfulness exercise would influence participants’ state anxiety. Specifically, participants who did the breathing exercise were expected to show a greater reduction in state anxiety than participants who did the body scan exercise. In addition, participants who did the body scan exercise were expected to show a greater reduction in state anxiety than participants in a control condition who did not practice the brief mindfulness exercise. It was also predicted that participants’ level of math anxiety would influence state anxiety. Specifically, participants with high math anxiety were expected to have a greater reduction in state anxiety than participants with low math anxiety. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that the effect of a brief mindfulness exercise would vary according to participants’ level of math anxiety. The effect of a brief mindfulness exercise was predicted to be greater for participants who had high math anxiety than participants who had low math anxiety. These hypotheses were tested with a 3 (Brief Mindfulness Exercise) x 2 (Math Anxiety) independent samples ANOVA.

Pairwise correlations were conducted to examine the relations between the mindfulness measure (CAMS-R), emotion regulation (ERQ), and trait-state anxiety (TSA). There was a positive relationship between CAMS-R and ERQ reappraisal r(90) = .37, p < .001 and a negative relationship between CAMS-R and TSA r(90) = -.45, p < .001.

The ANOVA showedno main effect of the mindfulness exercise on state anxiety, F(2, 77) = 0.75, p = .48. There were no significant differences in reduction of state anxiety between participants who listened to the breathing exercise (M = 0.22, SD = 0.94), participants who listened to the body scan exercise (M = 0.67, SD = 1.29), and participants in the control group (M = 0.41, SD = 1.07). However, there was a significant main effect of math anxiety on state anxiety, F(1, 77) = 4.53, p = .036. Participants who had high math anxiety (M = 0.70, SD = 1.23) showed a significantly greater reduction in state anxiety than participants with low math anxiety (M = 0.14, SD = 0.91). Counter to prediction, there was no interaction of Brief Mindfulness Exercise by Math Anxiety on state anxiety, F(2, 77) = 0.32, p = .73, as shown in Table 1 and Figure 1.

Contrary to predictions, tests of the simple main effects showed that there was no significant effect of mindfulness exercise for the individuals with high math anxiety, (F < 1.0). Participants high in math anxiety showed no difference in reduction of state anxiety according to the type of mindfulness exercise (Ms = 0.34, 0.84 0.88, SDs = .98, 1.25, 1.5; breathing, body scan, control, respectively). Similarly, there was no simple main effect of mindfulness exercise for the individuals with low math anxiety, (F < 1.0).

Discussion

The results showed that, as expected, participants with high math anxiety showed a significantly greater reduction in state anxiety than participants with low math anxiety. However,anxiety did not vary according to type of mindfulness exercise. Contrary to predictions, there was no significant difference in reduction of state anxiety among participants who listened to the breathing exercise, the body scan exercise, or those in the control group. Furthermore, the effect of mindfulness exercise did not vary for individuals high in math anxiety or low in math anxiety. As predicted, women were more likely than men to have high math anxiety, and participants with high mindfulness scores on CAMS-R tended to have high scores on the ERQ measure of reappraisal as a strategy of emotion regulation. Interestigly, the effect of mindfulness practice and math anxiety varied according to an individual’s level of mindfulness. Trait mindfulness appeared to offset the effect of an individual’s level of math anxiety.

An alternative explanation for the lack of difference between conditions may have been an ineffective control group. Due to time constraints, the participants did not complete any math problems. Consequently, the control group completed the pre-state anxiety measures and immediately completed the post-states anxiety measures, while the breathing and body scan groups listened to the mindfulness exercise between the state anxiety measures. This may have created an incomparable control condition. Another potential limitation was that the measure of Math Evaluation Anxiety (MEA) was not specific enough to measure the anxiety of doing math problems. The current study’s measure included questions that asked about participants typical reactions to doing math, but did not directly measure their anxiety before having to do math problems. One question for future research is whether women might show a greater capacity for anxiety reduction, as they tend to have higher levels of math anxiety.

Experiment 2

Method

Participants

Ninety-six undergraduate students,42 males, 52 females, and 2 unreported, (Mage = 20.33 years, SD = 2.00, age range: 18-34 years) enrolled in General Psychology participated in the study. Participants were predominantly white, reflecting the demographics of the local community. Students received course credit for participation, though an alternate exercise was provided for students who do not wish to participate.

Design

The study had a 2 x 2 factorial design. The first independent variable was the brief mindfulness exercise with two levels (mindfulness, audiobook control), which was a between-subjects variable. The second independent variable was whether participants had received counseling for anxiety previously (yes, no), which was a quasi-experimental variable. The main dependent variable was the reduction in negative symptoms of anxiety before and after the mindfulness exercise.

Materials

The stimulus presented to participants were two 15-question math quizzes and a 10-minute mindfulness exercise CD,either Insight Meditation(Salzberg & Goldstein, 2002) or an audiobook control entitledThe Mind and the Brain (Schwartz & Begley, 2002). The insight meditation CD focused on both the breath and bodily sensations; whereas, the audiobook control was simply a narrator reading topics in psychology.

The questionnaire presented to participants contained a total of 95 questions including demographic information(age, sex, year in school, general background, math history, anxiety medication history, counseling history), Trait Stress and Anxiety (TSA; Kabacoff, Segal, Hersen, & Van Hasselt,1997), Math Evaluation Anxiety scale (MEA; Plake & Parker, 1982), Math Anxiety Scale Revised (MAS-R, Bai, Wang, Pei, & Frey, 2009), Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale-Revised (CAMS-R; Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, & Laurenceau, 2007), Short Version of Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI; Walach, et al., 2006), Rapid Assessment of Well-Being – Short Depression and Happiness Scale (SDHS; Joseph, Linley, Harwood, Lewis, & McCollom, 2004), and items from and Pre-Post Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogatis, L.R. & Melisaratos, N., 1983) Responses were rated on a 1-8 scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.