Brain study reveals how successful students overcome math anxiety

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Oct-2011
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Contact: William Harms
w-harms@uchicago.edu
773-702-8356
University of Chicago

Success in math takes practice to control fears

Using brain-imaging technology for the first time with people experiencing mathematics anxiety, University of Chicago scientists have gained new insights into how some students are able to overcome their fears and succeed in math.

For the highly math anxious, researchers found a strong link between math success and activity in a network of brain areas in the frontal and parietal lobes involved in controlling attention and regulating negative emotional reactions. This response kicked in at the very mention of having to solve a mathematics problem.

Teachers as well as students can use the information to improve performance in mathematics, said Sian Beilock, associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago. Beilock and PhD student Ian Lyons report their findings in the article, "Mathematics Anxiety: Separating the Math from the Anxiety," published Oct. 20 in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

"Classroom practices that help students focus their attention and engage in the math task at hand may help eliminate the poor performance brought on by math anxiety," said Beilock, a leading expert on mathematics anxiety and author of the book Choke: What The Secrets Of The Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.

Instead of feeling anxious about an impending math task, students who could focus their attention were able to complete difficult math problems more successfully. Perhaps counter-intuitively, their success wasn't just about activating areas of the brain involved in math calculation. For math-anxious individuals to succeed, they need to focus on controlling their emotions, Beilock said.

Lyons and Beilock said their work implies that teaching students to control their emotions prior to doing math may be the best way to overcome the math difficulties that often go along with math anxiety. Without this initial step, simply providing additional math instruction or allowing students to become distracted by trying to squelch emotions once a math exam has begun is likely to prove ineffective in producing math success.

The study, which the National Science Foundation funded, began by administering a questionnaire to a group of UChicago students to determine if they had math anxiety. Students answered questions about how anxious they felt when registering for a math course, walking to a challenging math class, being handed a math textbook and so on. Lyons and Beilock then invited a group of students who were especially anxious about these math-related tasks to have their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed difficult math problems and a similarly difficult spelling task. A group of non-math-anxious students was selected as a control group.

In the fMRI scanner, students watched a computer screen for different cues in the form of simple, color-coded shapes. One shape indicated to students they were about to answer questions that tapped their spelling skills, and another shape indicated they were about to do a series of math problems. After a short delay, students then performed a few math or spelling problems. By analyzing brain responses during the cue and problems separately, Lyons and Beilock were able to look at what went on in highly math-anxious student's heads, even before the actual math began.

For the highly math-anxious, the researchers found a strong connection between math performance and activity in a network of brain areas in the frontal and parietal lobes.

The more these frontal and parietal regions were activated in math-anxious students when anticipating an impending math task, the more their math performance looked like the non-math-anxious control group. Indeed, highly math-anxious students who showed little activation in these regions when preparing to do math got only 68 percent of math problems correct. But those who showed the strongest activation got 83 percent correct nearly on par with low math-anxious controls (88 percent correct). This relationship was not seen for the spelling task.

The study found that for the highly math-anxious students who performed well on the math task, the brain activity that started during the anticipation phase initiated a cascade of brain activity during completion of the math task itself. This activity did not involve areas typically associated with performing numerical calculations. Rather, it was seen in subcortical structures especially caudate and nucleus accumbens associated with motivation and juggling risks and rewards with the demands of the task at hand.

"Essentially, overcoming math anxiety appears to be less about what you know and more about convincing yourself to just buckle down and get to it," Beilock said. "But if you wait till the math exam has already started to deal with your anxiety, it's already too late," Lyons added.

For students who were not anxious about math to begin with, there was no relationship between activation in brain areas important for focusing attention, controlling emotion and math performance. This shows that approaching math may be entirely different for high and low math-anxious students. "Think about walking across a suspension bridge if you're afraid of heights versus if you're not completely different ballgame," Lyons said.

The study also sheds light on how people who get nervous about doing math can put their fears aside in everyday situations, such as balancing a checkbook or figuring out a tip among friends or coworkers. Taking a few breaths before jumping in can help one focus less on preparing to do math, and more on what actually needs to be done. "When you let your brain do its job, it usually will," Lyons said. "If doing math makes you anxious, then your first task is to calm yourself down."

###


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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Oct-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: William Harms
w-harms@uchicago.edu
773-702-8356
University of Chicago

Success in math takes practice to control fears

Using brain-imaging technology for the first time with people experiencing mathematics anxiety, University of Chicago scientists have gained new insights into how some students are able to overcome their fears and succeed in math.

For the highly math anxious, researchers found a strong link between math success and activity in a network of brain areas in the frontal and parietal lobes involved in controlling attention and regulating negative emotional reactions. This response kicked in at the very mention of having to solve a mathematics problem.

Teachers as well as students can use the information to improve performance in mathematics, said Sian Beilock, associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago. Beilock and PhD student Ian Lyons report their findings in the article, "Mathematics Anxiety: Separating the Math from the Anxiety," published Oct. 20 in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

"Classroom practices that help students focus their attention and engage in the math task at hand may help eliminate the poor performance brought on by math anxiety," said Beilock, a leading expert on mathematics anxiety and author of the book Choke: What The Secrets Of The Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.

Instead of feeling anxious about an impending math task, students who could focus their attention were able to complete difficult math problems more successfully. Perhaps counter-intuitively, their success wasn't just about activating areas of the brain involved in math calculation. For math-anxious individuals to succeed, they need to focus on controlling their emotions, Beilock said.

Lyons and Beilock said their work implies that teaching students to control their emotions prior to doing math may be the best way to overcome the math difficulties that often go along with math anxiety. Without this initial step, simply providing additional math instruction or allowing students to become distracted by trying to squelch emotions once a math exam has begun is likely to prove ineffective in producing math success.

The study, which the National Science Foundation funded, began by administering a questionnaire to a group of UChicago students to determine if they had math anxiety. Students answered questions about how anxious they felt when registering for a math course, walking to a challenging math class, being handed a math textbook and so on. Lyons and Beilock then invited a group of students who were especially anxious about these math-related tasks to have their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed difficult math problems and a similarly difficult spelling task. A group of non-math-anxious students was selected as a control group.

In the fMRI scanner, students watched a computer screen for different cues in the form of simple, color-coded shapes. One shape indicated to students they were about to answer questions that tapped their spelling skills, and another shape indicated they were about to do a series of math problems. After a short delay, students then performed a few math or spelling problems. By analyzing brain responses during the cue and problems separately, Lyons and Beilock were able to look at what went on in highly math-anxious student's heads, even before the actual math began.

For the highly math-anxious, the researchers found a strong connection between math performance and activity in a network of brain areas in the frontal and parietal lobes.

The more these frontal and parietal regions were activated in math-anxious students when anticipating an impending math task, the more their math performance looked like the non-math-anxious control group. Indeed, highly math-anxious students who showed little activation in these regions when preparing to do math got only 68 percent of math problems correct. But those who showed the strongest activation got 83 percent correct nearly on par with low math-anxious controls (88 percent correct). This relationship was not seen for the spelling task.

The study found that for the highly math-anxious students who performed well on the math task, the brain activity that started during the anticipation phase initiated a cascade of brain activity during completion of the math task itself. This activity did not involve areas typically associated with performing numerical calculations. Rather, it was seen in subcortical structures especially caudate and nucleus accumbens associated with motivation and juggling risks and rewards with the demands of the task at hand.

"Essentially, overcoming math anxiety appears to be less about what you know and more about convincing yourself to just buckle down and get to it," Beilock said. "But if you wait till the math exam has already started to deal with your anxiety, it's already too late," Lyons added.

For students who were not anxious about math to begin with, there was no relationship between activation in brain areas important for focusing attention, controlling emotion and math performance. This shows that approaching math may be entirely different for high and low math-anxious students. "Think about walking across a suspension bridge if you're afraid of heights versus if you're not completely different ballgame," Lyons said.

The study also sheds light on how people who get nervous about doing math can put their fears aside in everyday situations, such as balancing a checkbook or figuring out a tip among friends or coworkers. Taking a few breaths before jumping in can help one focus less on preparing to do math, and more on what actually needs to be done. "When you let your brain do its job, it usually will," Lyons said. "If doing math makes you anxious, then your first task is to calm yourself down."

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/uoc-bsr101711.php

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RIM unveils software system for BlackBerry, PlayBook

Research In Motion will introduce souped-up operating software for its BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook tablet designed to make both more formidable competitors to Apple and Google devices.

At a developers conference in San Francisco, the Canadian company said on Tuesday it would install its new BBX platform in next-generation devices but provided no timetable.

BBX would replace the antiquated software that now powers the BlackBerry with a package built around the QNX system, already on the PlayBook. RIM wants to stop a growing consumer preference for the faster and more intuitive Apple iPhone and devices powered by Google's Android.

"If RIM ... doesn't put every resource the company has into getting QNX out the door, BlackBerry is going to be a dead technology by next year," Jon Rettinger, president of TechnoBuffalo, a technology blog, said before the conference opened. "People have stopped caring about BlackBerry products because of the poor operating system."

RIM shares rose 2.5 percent to $22.95 in Nasdaq trade on Tuesday. The stock has fallen about 60 percent since the beginning of the year after a series of product missteps and profit warnings.

"I have not seen anything outside the box," Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Robison said. "They seem to be on the charted course. I have not seen anything to impress investors."

Depending on the reception that coders and investors give RIM's latest offerings, the event could help the Canadian company start repairing the damage done to its image by last week's global disruption of BlackBerry service.

The outage highlighted a series of setbacks for RIM over the past year as the company struggled to regain its stride after falling behind in a market it once dominated.

New tools
RIM did not say whether the BBX software would enable the PlayBook to handle email routed through RIM's highly secure enterprise servers for the first time without being linked to a BlackBerry smartphone. That is one of the biggest shortcomings of a tablet that has been an unqualified dud in its first months on the market.

In addition, RIM announced a series of developer tool updates, including a framework to allow the PlayBook to run applications written for devices powered by Android, as well as BlackBerry smartphones. That could give PlayBook users a much wider range of apps to run.

"We're giving developers the tools they need to build richer applications, and we're providing direction on how to best develop their smartphone and tablet apps as the BlackBerry and QNX platforms converge into our next generation BBX platform," RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a speech opening the three-day event.

RIM introduced a series of BlackBerry touchscreen devices using its legacy software in August. In a rare recent success for the company, the line has produced more sales than expected. The upgrade was an interim step to buy time until the company was ready to roll out a BlackBerry line with a new operating system.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44946641/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

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Liberia president optimistic over runoff vote (AP)

MONROVIA, Liberia ? Liberia's president says she's optimistic over a runoff after poll results show she failed to gain the majority needed to win outright.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said late Sunday she is ready for a Nov. 8 runoff against Winston Tubman. With 96 percent of polling stations counted, she led with around 44 percent. Election officials said the remaining results won't change much.

Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year with two other women, said she was disappointed she didn't win outright in the Oct. 11 vote.

"We have to be a bit disappointed because we wanted to win in the first round, but I accept it that's the will of the people," she said. "We came out very well ahead, our percentage is high even though we did not get over the 50 (percent) mark."

Harvard-trained Sirleaf was Africa's first democratically elected female president. She is viewed abroad as a reformer but Tubman's camp portrays her as out of touch with the impoverished population.

On Monday, police said assailants torched a radio station owned by an opposition supporter in the capital of the West African nation, though it was not clear what the assailants' motives were or if there was any connection to the poll.

Police spokesman George Bardue said the police arrested one suspect and are investigating.

Love FM chief Paul Mulbah said the assailants threw a petrol bomb into the station. He said the fire did not reach the studio and the station is back on air.

He said the radio station was warned three days earlier and said they informed officials.

Bardue said police have also arrested two suspects over a Saturday blaze at the local headquarters of the ruling Unity Party just days after the poll.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111017/ap_on_re_af/af_liberia_election

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Simmons gets standing ovation at wedding

By Ree Hines

As the frontman for KISS, Gene Simmons is no stranger to an enthusiastic reception from the crowd, but during his recent wedding to longtime partner Shannon Tweed, Simmons even managed to get a standing ovation from friends and family.

The KISS frontman gets a standing ovation as he finally weds longtime love Shannon Tweed on "Gene Simmons Family Jewels."

In an exclusive ?Gene Simmons Family Jewels? preview provided to TODAY.com by A&E, wedding guests can be seen applauding and getting to their feet to give the once-reluctant groom one heck of a greeting. From the looks of it, Simmons loved every minute of it.

After the ceremony, Simmons' son, Nick, asked the rocker if he was ?accustomed to that sort of fanfare.? Simmons said he was. ?Cause that?s the last one," Nick assured.

Wedding or standing O? Either way, Simmons looked a little shocked by the thought of it.

Two new pre-wedding episodes of "Gene Simmons?Family Jewels" air Monday night starting at 9 p.m. ET, and?the big event?can be seen Tuesday night?at?9 p.m.?on A&E.

Will you tune in to see Simmons and Tweed swap vows? Tell us on our Facebook page.

?

Related content:

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2011/10/17/8364067-exclusive-clip-gene-simmons-gets-standing-o-at-his-wedding

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Hip Hop stars Kanye West, Jay-Z sued (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Kanye West and Jay-Z have hit a bum note with one songwriter who claims they lifted his material without permission.

The two hip hop moguls are being sued by musician Syl Johnson, who claims in a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Illinois Friday alleging that West and Jay-Z sampled his 1967 song "Different Strokes" for a tune on their recent collaboration "Watch the Throne."

According to Johnson's suit, the pair had first solicited permission to sample "Different Strokes" on the song "The Joy" for West's album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," but were shot down, and the song was left off the album. The tune ended up on "Watch the Throne," which was released in August.

According to the suit, the defendants claim they received permission to sample the song from an entity called the Numero Uno Group, which has never had any authorization to license the tune.

"Different Strokes" has been sampled by a number of artists, including Michael Jackson, Kid Rock and Will Smith, the lawsuit states.

Johnson, who also names Island Def Jam, Universal Music Group and Roc-a-Fella Records in the suit, is seeking actual and punitive damages to be determined at a jury trial.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111017/people_nm/us_hiphop

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From a single hashtag, protest circled the world

It all started innocuously enough with a July 13 blog post urging people to #OccupyWallStreet, as though such a thing (Twitter hashtag and all) were possible.

It turns out, with enough momentum and a keen sense of how to use social media, it actually is.

The Occupy movement, decentralized and leaderless, has mobilized thousands of people around the world almost exclusively via the Internet. To a large degree through Twitter, and also with platforms like Facebook and Meetup, crowds have connected and gathered.

As with any movement, a spark is needed to start word spreading. SocialFlow, a social media marketing company, did an analysis for Reuters of the history of the Occupy hashtag on Twitter and the ways it spread and took root.

The first apparent mention was that July 13 blog post by activist group Adbusters but the idea was slow to get traction.

The next Twitter mention was on July 20 from a Costa Rican film producer named Francisco Guerrero, linking to a blog post on a site called Wake Up from Your Slumber that reiterated the Adbusters call to action.

The site, founded in 2006 "to expose America's fraudulent monetary system and the evil of charging interest on money loaned," is a reference to the biblical verse Romans 13:11 that reads in part: "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

Guerrero's post was retweeted once and then there was silence until two July 23 tweets ? one from the Spanish user Gurzbo and one from a retired high school chemistry teacher in Long Island, New York named Cindy tweeting as gemswinc.

Gurzbo's post was not passed along by anyone but Cindy's was, by eight people, including a Delaware-based opponent of the Federal Reserve, a vegan information rights supporter, a Washington-based environmentalist and an Alabama-based progressive blogger.

Again, there was relative silence for nearly two weeks, until LazyBookworm tweeted the Occupy hashtag again on August 5. That got seven retweets, largely from a crowd of organic food supporters and poets.

Hashtag revolt
The notion of Occupy Wall Street was out there but it was not gaining much attention ? until, of course, it did, suddenly and with force.

Social media experts trace the expansion to hyper-local tweeters, people who cover the pulse of communities at a level of detail not even local papers can match.

In New York, credit goes to the Twitter account of Newyorkist, whose more than 11,000 tweets chronicle the city in block-by-block detail. His was one of the first well-followed accounts to mention the protests in mid-September.

Trendistic, which tracks hashtag trends on Twitter, shows that OccupyWallStreet first showed up in any volume around 11 p.m. on September 16, the evening before the occupation of lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park began. Within 24 hours, the tag represented nearly 1 of every 500 uses of a hashtag.

The first two weeks of the movement were slow, media coverage was slim and little happened beyond the taking of the concrete park itself. But then a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge prompted hundreds of arrests and the spark was ignited.

On October 1, #OccupyBoston started to show up on Twitter. Within a couple of weeks, #OccupyDenver and #OccupySD and others appeared.

The Occupy Wall Street page on Facebook started on September 19 with a YouTube video of the early protests. By September 22, it reached critical mass.

"Newcomers today, welcome! Feel free to post. Advertise your own pages of resistance. Network until it works," read one posting meant to inspire protests elsewhere.

For young activists around the world, who grew up with the Internet and the smartphone, Facebook and Twitter have become crucial in expanding the movement.

They are pioneering platforms like Vibe that lets people anonymously share text, photos and video over short distances for brief periods of time ? perfect for use at rallies.

"No one owns a (Twitter) hashtag, it has no leadership, it has no organization, it has no creed but it's quite appropriate to the architecture of the net. This is a distributed revolt," said Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at City University of New York and author of the well-known blog BuzzMachine.

Some reports say the protesters have raised as much as $300,000 in donations to cover everything from pizza to video equipment but others put the figure much lower.

The Alliance for Global Justice, which calls itself "the fiscal sponsor for Occupy Wall Street," has raised $23,200 via WePay.com.

Occupy Everywhere
As of Monday afternoon, Facebook listed no fewer than 125 Occupy-related pages, from New York to Tulsa and all points in between. Roughly 1 in every 500 hashtags used on Twitter on Monday, all around the world, was the movement's own #OWS.

The websites keep proliferating ? We Are the 99 Percent, Parents for Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together, even the parody Occupy Sesame Street (concerned mostly with the plight of monsters living in garbage cans).

Online streaming video has also been a huge resource for the protesters, using cheap cameras and high-speed wireless Internet access.

Supporters, opponents and the merely curious got the chance last Saturday to watch the Occupy Wall Street protesters decide whether to occupy a major public park, Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village area.

They saw warnings the police were about to arrive in riot gear and with horses, vans and buses to take away protesters if there were mass arrests. Local media reported about 10 arrests among the 3,000 or so people in the park.

As the seconds to a possible confrontation ticked down, the tension led to various reactions from those watching online.

"Anyone arrested is a political prisoner," said one.

"Here comes Czar Bloomberg's Cossacks," said another, in reference to New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the appearance of the mounted police.

There were "we are watching" messages of support from cities across the United States and some who found it the best entertainment going on a Saturday night.

"So much more exciting than a TV show" was one comment.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44936518/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

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