Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Math is all around us, but propensity to notice the role it plays in everyday life might differ from person to person. Here, we test whether children with broader conceptions of math experience lower levels of math anxiety. In Study 1, we gathered data from 98 Indian middle schoolers in Vadodara, Gujarat. Children who categorized more activities in a provided list as "math" demonstrated more positive attitudes towards math on a math anxiety scale. We also found that breadth of math category predicted how skilled children believed themselves on activities they included in their math conception. In Study 2, we explore when these effects emerge. We tested 94 children aged 7-10. We found that while children in this range exhibit significant variability in math conception, their breadth of math conception does not predict their math anxiety. We discuss implications of our findings for interventions to mitigate math anxiety in children.