Mathematics Anxiety

Mathematics anxiety is widely discussed in academic fields, but there is little discussion on “language anxiety,” “physical anxiety,” or “historical anxiety.” This could be because mathematics is so abstract that little concrete, situational, or real-life experience can help students overcome the difficulties they encounter with it. When examined in Chinese or history, students do not leave questions unanswered when they do not know the exact answer; they write whatever their understanding allows. When it comes to mathematics exams, however, a student who has no idea of the answer to a problem usually cannot write down anything because mathematics problems are objective. This gives the student a sense of helplessness and even anxiety. In this chapter, we introduce a series of recent findings on mathematics anxiety during mathematical processing, as well as the effects of gender and of a novel intervention approach (abacus training) on mathematics anxiety.