Interesting Article, "Can math problems trigger physical sense of threat?"

Submitted by Brooke Istas on Thu, 11/01/2012 - 11:54
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Hello All!

I came across this article about a study that says, "for the math-phobic, numbers pose threat of pain"!  This is interesting considering that many of our learners are math-phobic.  As instructors, how do you deal with mathphodias? And if this study is correct, what are some instructional implications knowing that learners with mathphodia feel physically harmed when faced with math problems?

Here is the link to the article:  http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/31/for-math-phobic-numbers-pose-threat-of-pain/

Thoughts?

Brooke Istas
Math and Numeracy SME

Comments

    Somebody did ask in a comment somewhere this was posted why math anxiety was singled out.   Acute anxiety of any sort probably gets the same reaction.   However, I do thik it's entirely too easy to ignore the stark fact that some of our students are too busy trying to survive, in "flight or fight" mode, to attend to learning math concepts.   IT's as if they were trying to learn with a barely restrained wild animal right next to them... guess where the attention is going? 

   Now, if students can learn to redirect the energy, they can do well.   http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Publications/Lyons&Beilock_2011_CC.pdf   describes separating out the anticipation of doing math and the responses of that from the doing of math.   (In the "math causes pain" research it was showing a prompt indicating that the next thing to do was math that resulted in the pain-like response.)